Spring Dinner

Yesterday we went for a walk at one of my favorite conservation lands, which has meadows and forest and lots of beehives. My top bar hives, which I gave away last year, ended up there, and there are at least four other collections of hives. There is also a Victory Garden and some marshes. As you might imagine, there are lots of birds and lots of foraging. 

I'd hoped to snag some garlic mustard to make a risotto to go with dinner, but I'm a little late; the garlic mustard has already flowered and would likely be [more] bitter. But I did see nettles just starting to come up, right when they are at their best. 

Despite my lack of gloves, I picked the tips off about a cup's worth of nettles, tossed in a few violet flowers, and brought them home. My fingers definitely got stung, and they tingled quite a bit for the rest of the day. Worth it -

Once I got home, I made a nettle and field garlic risotto, using the field garlic from the yard (you know, the stuff that grows everywhere that looks like chives). This was served with chicken piccata and a salad garnished with those violets I picked. A fresh tasting dinner to celebrate Spring!

Another Nettle Adventure

One of the recipes which really uses nettles well is this risotto from Hank Shaw.  Every time I've made it, I do something different.  Risotto is very flexible and tolerates variation well.  Sometimes I add mushrooms, sometimes I use different greens.  But, in general, I follow the core of the recipe and it comes out terrific, every time.

I'd blanched all those nettles the other day and set a bunch aside to make a risotto.  The original plan was to make it Thursday night, but I got home late and was tired.  Then, last night, I got home even later, so we ate out instead.  Tonight, I was able to carve out enough time to make dinner and finally got to make this.

Following the general recipe, here are today's changes:  I added sliced shiitake mushrooms when I sauteed the shallots and I used a total of 2 pints of vegetable stock and one pint of duck stock.  I think the duck stock really enhanced the flavor!  Paired with some steak and broccolini, it was just right.

A Return to Nettle Wednesdays

Around the stables, the spring greens became abundant in the last week or so.  As I walked around today, I saw curly dock, dandelions, Japanese knotweed, wintercress, oregano, garlic mustard, and a few other greens I probably should be able to identify. Most of the greens had already flowered, making them bitter. But, today, I only had eyes for the nettles.

This week they were easy to find.  Tucked in the back, near the stream, mixed in with an awful lot of garlic mustard. They'd grown fairly high, so I only took the tips. When I was done snipping, I had a full grocery bagful. I thought maybe it was enough for 2 projects but it turns out I can get 3 separate meals out of them.  Likely by next week the plants will be too far gone until the fall, so I'm making full use of what I picked!

Tonight's dinner was sausage ravioli with a nettle and mascarpone sauce. I'd made this before, with spaghetti, but I much preferred tonight's version. Garlic and shallots were sautéed in butter and olive oil, then I added about half a cup of milk, 8 oz. of mascarpone cheese, blanched nettles, salt, pepper, nutmeg, quartered Campari tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. When the ravioli were ready the sauce was spooned over each serving. The dish was finished with a little more freshly ground nutmeg. The nettles went very well with the sausage and the whole thing just looked pretty.

Tomorrow I plan to make a risotto. The third portion will likely be used to make some pasta, so for now it's in the freezer.

Spring is Finally Here

Yesterday I got to the stables a little early with the intention to do a little foraging.  I felt that the nettle patch should be sprouting, and I was right, although not as much as I'd thought.  However, I came home with a small bag of nettle tips which I stuck in the fridge until I had time, as I had 20 minutes to get cleaned up and leave the house again.  The nettles could wait.

When I got home from work today I blanched the nettles and set to work on dinner.  I boned eight chicken thighs and rolled them around some cheese and the blanched nettles.  After securing them with toothpicks, they were dipped in beaten egg and then into bread crumbs (homemade) and seasoned with salt and pepper.  The chicken was baked at 375 for an hour.

Meanwhile, I made a vegetable medley with cauliflower, baby carrots, and corn, which was sauteed in a little oil and then I added a packet of miso mixed with about 1/2 c. white wine.  When the liquid was cooked off, I added 4 T. of butter.  This seems to be the only way the 10 year old eats cauliflower without complaining.    I also made a white sauce for the chicken.

Yum, spring is here!

Venison Confit

Over Thanksgiving I received a gift of a couple of venison roasts from my brother-in-law, who works in northeast Ohio with a guy who hunts.  The roasts came from that coworker (thank you!) and my brother-in-law thought I would appreciate them.  I had decided that I would prepare one as a confit, using all the rendered duck fat I had left.  Today I set up the slow cooker with 7 cups of duck fat and a 3 pound roast.  I had to slice up the roast so that it would fit in the cooker and be submerged by the fat.  I let it cook all day and it was very good - moist and rich tasting.  As side dishes, I made a risotto with nettles and some of those suillus mushrooms, and sauteed broccoli rabe with garlic and cayenne pepper.

Happy New Year to all of us!

Nettle...Something.

While it is still nettle season I have been trying to get some when I'm at the stables and have time.  Yesterday the patch I usually frequent looked like it had been mowed so I found another, taller patch with more mature plants.  I had read on a foraging forum about making nettle chips and thought that I could try that.

Since I don't have a dehydrator, I used the oven's warm setting.  The nettles, once blanched and drained, were laid out on a rack.  This was really, really fiddly.  Most of the nettle leaves were all bunched up, with the resulting chips being more like sticks.  After drying them, I sprinkled them with Himalayan pink salt and put them in a jar.  Most likely I will be the only one who eats them and, even with that, I suspect it will be more likely that I will be sprinkling things with nettle powder.  

Springtime, Finally.

This winter certainly felt like it went on forever.  It's still not all that warm, but at least all the flowers are blooming and the spring greens have emerged.  Two days ago I picked a bag full of nettle tips at the farm and today I blanched them and made nettle pasta.

After blanching the nettles, I blended them with one egg and set it aside.  When I was ready, I made the pasta:  1 pound of flour, 3 more eggs, the nettle mixture, and some water.  I rolled out the sheets of pasta and put them in a damp tea towel to rest until I made the filling.

That...was a mistake.

In the interim, I went to Wolf Meadow Farm and bought some really wonderful ricotta, very fresh mozzarella, and a few other cheeses.  I came home ready to make ravioli with mozzarella and ricotta and parmesan filling.  Things did not go exactly as planned.

First of all, do not store pasta sheets on waxed paper.  Just don't.  Unless you plan to freeze them.

Second, you don't need to use damp tea towels.  I think I would have been better off just letting them sit in the fridge and drying out a little.  I ended up having to peel the pasta off the waxed paper and rerolling it.  There was a lot of cursing but at least most of it was in my head.  My first batch of ravioli, the ones for which I attempted to use my press, fell apart, so I put them inside more pasta and made thicker ravioli.  Ones that were cut by hand.  Which ended up being the right choice.

Each raviolo pillow had a small piece of fresh mozzarella plus a little ricotta mixed with parmesan, salt and pepper.  We ate just under two dozen for dinner and have about two dozen more in the freezer for later.  These were served with a tomato and eggplant sauce I picked up at the farm as well.  And, with the leftover pasta dough, I made a little bit of a spaetzle-like pasta.  We all had a taste.  The mozzarella provided a nice stringy melted texture and the ravioli, while a little thick, worked out well in the end.

Nettle Frittata

With the snowstorm, the kids didn't have school, so we got off to a slow start.  I'm making Turducken soup (more on that in another blog post) but at some point everyone got hungry.  We had some leftover bacon so I decided to try a frittata.

Bacon and Nettle Frittata

1 cup blanched nettles, chopped

4 slices thick bacon, diced

8 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 cup shredded cheese (I used Colby-jack and Wauvremont - the latter of which smells bad but tastes fine)

salt, pepper and nutmeg

Beat the eggs and milk, add the spices.  Put the bacon, nettles and cheese in a baking dish.  Pour the egg mixture over everything.  Bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.

P.S. Did you notice the new plates?

Nettle and Mascarpone Pasta

Until my bike started having issues I was having a nice bike ride today on the path.  I passed the hops and autumn olives and rode on, past the nettles and the crabapples and some grapes.  Then my bike lost a small but apparently somewhat important screw and I had to go home.  Fortunately, the bike was ridable but I couldn't risk going further in case it suddenly wasn't.

On the way back, I stopped at the nettle patch and grabbed a bag full.  I'd planned ahead, with gardening gloves and scissors, but I still got stung on my wrist above the glove because the patch was pretty dense.  Then I rode on and stopped again at the black walnut tree and picked up a few more walnuts.  All told, I biked 12 miles.

Black Walnuts after roasting

While the new walnuts were drying, I cracked the other batch with a vise, pulled out the nutmeats and roasted them for 30 minutes at 200 degrees.  These are in the fridge in a little jar, and maybe I'll add them to my oatmeal.  Then I set to work making something with those nettles.  First I blanched them and left them in a strainer while I made a sauce.

Borrowing on this recipe for spinach and mascarpone cheese sauce, I substituted nettles for the spinach and shallot for the onion.  Here's the recipe, so I have it:

2/3 cup mascarpone cheese

1/3 cup milk

1 shallot, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg

blanched nettles

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Whisk the milk and mascarpone together.  Saute the garlic and shallot in 1 T. butter and 1 T. olive oil about a minute or two, until soft.  Add the nettles and the milk/cheese mixture and mix.  Let this boil and thicken for a minute or two.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and a pinch of nutmeg.  Add the parmesan.  Toss with pasta, serve with a little extra nutmeg on top.

I tossed thin spaghetti with the sauce and served with extra parmesan cheese.  Yum.  I think this might be my favorite form of nettles yet!

Another Nettle Wednesday

It's Wednesday, so it's a riding day, so that means I have time to forage around the stables for nettles and other things.  I brought back a bunch of greens for Mocha's dinner:  curly dock, dandelion, sheep sorrel, red clover, a little oregano, and some other dandelion-like green.  I also grabbed a small amount of nettle tips and a handful of oregano for our pizza.

The pizza was an unexpected gift; we'd gone for dinner the other night at the home of our mason, who wanted me to meet his wife as we had a lot of cooking interests in common.  She has a tremendous vegetable garden, well organized and well placed with full sun and in a place that is easy to tend.  Her husband built the garden for her, including the retaining wall which held it in place.  He's quite proud of it, and with very good reason.  She is a woman of many talents.  She gardens, cans, makes cheese and cured meats, they even pick mushrooms!  For dinner, along with many other wonderful foods, she served home made pizza 3 ways - with tomato sauce (homemade) and cheese, with garlic and cheese, and with chopped up greens.  She sent us home with an entire tomato and cheese pizza and freshly made bread as well.  Wow!

Knowing the culinary leanings of my children, I sprinkled the fresh oregano on 2/3 of the pizza, and then spread chopped blanched nettles on half of the oregano'd part.  That left 1/3 of the pizza with just tomato sauce and cheese for the 8 year old and nettles and oregano in varying concentrations for the rest of us.  I drizzled the nettles with olive oil and baked the pizza in the oven for 15 minutes, until the cheese was melty again and the nettles were crispy on top and soft on the bottom.  It tasted really fresh and not excessively nettle-y.  Totally worth doing again!

Belated Mother's Day Post

Really, I'd post more often if I could get to the computer.  The 8 year old has discovered Minecraft.

Hope everyone out there had a happy Mother's Day!  I had a chance to make the dinner I'd planned to make 3 days prior but was just too tired:  nettle risotto and steak.  What I found out is that nettles, when picked and stuck in the fridge, dry out a little.  However, they rehydrate nicely when you blanch them.  Also, you can touch them in their dried-out state.  I'd picked them last Wednesday, but with one thing after another, they kept getting ignored.....  This risotto included chopped up shitake mushrooms.  I'm trying to find the best mushroom to go with the nettles, so far I think oyster mushrooms are best.  So this round was:

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup chopped shitake mushrooms

2 T. butter

1 c. arborio rice

4 cups stock

1/2 cup blanched, chopped nettles

butter

parmesan cheese

salt and pepper

The garlic, mushrooms and rice were lightly sautéed and then I started adding the stock, 1 cup at a time: 2 cups chicken stock and 2 cups vegetable stock, stirring frequently.  At the third cup of stock I added the nettles, all chopped up.  Once all the stock was absorbed, I added another tablespoon of butter and about 1/3 cup parmesan cheese.  All the recipes say to serve the risotto right away, but I find that if I leave it on the stove, off the heat, but covered, it gets even creamier so it seems better to wait a little.  It also solves the problem of making sure everything is ready at the same time.

Two Foraged Dishes

Gotta love the blogosphere!

Not great lighting, but it is 10 pm....

I found this recipe for wild onion kimchi on one of the blogs I follow and I thought, I have plenty of field garlic, I like kimchi, why don't I try this?  Well, for one thing, 1.5 pounds of wild onions or wild leeks is attainable.  1.5 pounds of tiny little field garlic bulbs is, in my opinion, not.  Certainly not if you want to do other things in your day!

After about a half an hour I did get 1.5 ounces.  I thought maybe I just needed to scale down the recipe.  Turns out that the volume of the field garlic was larger than I thought so I only cut the recipe amounts in half and that was just right.  I still ended up with just a pint of fermenting stuff but, really, how much do I need?  Not much.  Should be ready in a few days. 

Today was also my first nettle picking day.  Last week they looked like they were starting to grow and I figured that this week they'd be just right.  I brought home a bag full and blanched them.  I used them to make a mushroom and nettle risotto that came out really tasty.  I used a small container of baby bellas and chopped them into 1/2 inch pieces, which I sautéed with garlic before adding the rice, turkey and vegetable stocks (1 pint each), nettles (also chopped, with stems removed) and romano cheese.  We had the risotto with steaks (served with homemade horseradish, a gift from my boss who makes it yearly for Passover, it's terrific) and some really good strawberries.

Tuscan Nettle Soup

The other day, at the stables, I wasn't planning on getting any nettles.  I had a lot to do, I reasoned, and that would just add work.  Why would I add to my stress?

I must be a glutton for punishment.

After bringing home a bag full of nettle tips, I put them in the fridge until today, when I made a Tuscan soup.  I browned onion, leeks, carrots and celery and then added sweet Italian sausage.  To this I added 2 quarts of vegetable stock, 2 leaves of kale and all the nettles.  Then I added a large can of cannellini beans, a bay leaf, some salt and pepper, and thyme.  This simmered for about an hour and a half and was served with fresh French bread.  Very filling and tasty!

Turns out it wasn't as stressful as I thought it would be.  Once it was finally simmering.

What Else to do with Nettles?

This is the time of year when, as the weather cools, the nettles start growing again.  Yesterday I picked a bunch of the tops of the plants; after blanching them it was about a cup.  But, other than soup and risotto, what else could I do with them?

Potato-nettle gratin!  I used 2 pounds of potatoes from my farm share and layered them with the nettles, salt and pepper, gruyere cheese and some half-and-half.  The recipe for potato gratin, from Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop, calls for heavy cream, but I didn't have any.  Half-and-half never really does the right thing when it's heated, though, but I'm much more likely to have it on hand than cream.  Anyway, this was baked for about an hour at 375 degrees and it was terrific.  The nettles really worked with the nuttiness of the gruyere.  Served with a steak and an arugula and goat cheese salad, it was a perfect autumn side dish.  I will definitely make this again!

Nettle Ravioli, Revisited

Remember how last year I made nettle ravioli?  With rye pasta, and nettles on the inside?  Well, I'm in the mood to mix things up a bit.  This time, the nettles are on the outside!

I made half a batch of pasta dough: half a pound of flour, 2 eggs, 1 T. olive oil and 39 g frozen nettles.

The nettles were thawed then pureed with the oil and the eggs, mixed with the flour and the dough was allowed to rest for about 15 minutes.  After that, I rolled it out.  Initially I was just going to make fettucini, but then I changed my mind and mixed up a quick filling of grated parmesan, grated mixed italian cheese, cream cheese, and 2 eggs.  Instead of using the ravioli press, I used the cutter I got for Christmas.  The shapes are all a little wonky, but that is OK.  They won't win any beauty contests, but I think they will taste fabulous!

Now, what to serve them with?  Any suggestions?

Update:  Clam sauce!  And it was AWESOME!  The 7 year old ate it all up, with just butter and cheese, and declared it the best ravioli ever (and that's saying something, isn't it?).

To make the sauce: half a pound of chopped clams, 1/4 cup butter, spoonful of minced garlic, plus pepper, oregano and basil, simmered until the clams were cooked.  Super, super easy!

Cooking with Weeds

Since I read the recipe on the 3 Foragers' blog, I've been wanting to make Japanese Knotweed bread.  Basically it's the same recipe as for the muffins on their site, but doubled.  After gathering some knotweed shoots at the stables yesterday I washed them and chopped them today and had only one cup.  To double the recipe, I needed a total of 4 cups.  So I went out to the bike path and found a spot where there is a lot of knotweed and started cutting.

What no one really mentions is that foraged food seems to take more effort to prepare.  Either you have to blanch it, or peel it, or cook it in several exchanges of water.  It's a lot of work!  So while this is fun and still a novelty I will continue to do it, but if there ever reaches a time when the work outweighs the fun I might pass.  Today, with the knotweed, I came close.  I spent an awful lot of time standing at the sink, peeling knotweed shoots.  But I do think the effort is worth it, the batter tasted good and the bread smells terrific.  I am waiting for it to cool to try a piece.  Strangely enough it made 2 loaves, not one.  Not sure why, but I'm fine with that.

While the bread was baking I made stuffed shells using some goat cheese I made a few days ago and some of my frozen nettles.  I mixed the goat cheese with parmesan, shredded mozzarella, 3 eggs, salt, pepper, and fresh parsley and stuffed 5 shells with this mixture.  Then I added chopped nettles to the rest, just a half a cup, and stuffed the other 15 shells.  I am expecting that the 6 year old will not be interested in the nettles.  This will be baked with a tomato-meat sauce and more cheese on top - 400 degrees for half an hour.  The reason I used the goat cheese is that it came out runny (again) and I don't really know why.  I think I will need to get some cheese starter and use that instead of the lemon juice.  But I couldn't spread it on anything so it seemed like I needed to use it in something.

Stealth Greens

Yesterday I found that our grocery store was having a meat sale.  I love it when they do that - mix and match 5 items for $20.  I got 2 packages of chicken cutlets and 3 packages of bacon (I was a little late and missed out on some of the variety).  Some of that went in the freezer, but I used 1 package of the chicken to make chicken parmesan.  I made it in 2 casserole dishes - one with nettles and one without.  I know what I can get away with as far as feeding the 6 year old, and this was not going to fly.

When adding the nettles, I pulled a little package of them out of the freezer; these are the ones I froze last fall.  I chopped it finely, still mostly frozen, and sprinkled the nettles between the layers of chicken before it went into the oven.  When my husband came home, he said, "Why is it green?"  I said, "Think of it as a florentine."

He did admit, after a few bites, "You know, nettles have a really nice flavor."

81 Degrees!

That's how hot it was today.  In March.  In Massachusetts.  To use the local vocabulary, "It's wicked weird."

Spring also means that the nettles are starting to grow again at the stables, so after my ride today I grabbed my gardening gloves and got to work.  I picked about 3 cups of nettle shoots, generally 3-4 pairs of leaves per shoot.  When we got home I blanched them, drained them, squeezed out the water, and then things got interesting:

The nettles were sauteed in canola oil and butter, with some pepper and some of those field-garlic-chive like things.  Then when they were almost crispy they were drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  They were GOOD.

Nettle Ravioli

And so much more!

Perhaps some of you are aware, it snowed last night.  In Massachusetts.  In October.  And, from what I can tell, Halloween is a rather tenuous holiday which cannot handle snow.  Almost everything I had planned for the weekend was postponed, cancelled, or postponed then cancelled.

Remember how I was making Halloween costumes for the riding competition?  Cancelled.  Too slippery for the horse trailers.

Our neighborhood has an annual Halloween party in the local park.  Postponed, then cancelled.  First it was raining/snowing, then the paths were too wet today.

Instead, I spent the day cooking.  Yesterday I started a batch of mascarpone cheese.  This time I used Creme Fraiche starter culture, so it sat overnight in a warm room and then this morning I drained the creme fraiche in butter muslin for 4 hours to get the mascarpone.  I think I like this version better than the previous, using cream and tartaric acid.  It takes longer, but it's really good!

While the mascarpone was draining, I made a batch of sugar cookies (don't get too excited, it was a mix) in Halloween themed shapes: candy corn, spider, and skull and crossbones.  Later, when we decorated them, we decided that the spiders also worked as eyes with legs, and the candy corns also worked as ghosts.  The 6 year old decided that every shape made an Angry Bird.  (The 6 year old lately speaks of nothing but Angry Birds.  And will be one for Halloween tomorrow.  Yes, I had to make a whole separate costume from the riding one.)

Using the recipe in Hunt, Gather, Cook, I made rye pasta and used my frozen nettles, 2 potatoes, and 1/2 cup of the mascarpone cheese to make nettle ravioli.  The 10 year old was a big help for this project and together we made 5 dozen raviolis.  This pasta dough is even stretchier but much more fragile than the other (plain) pasta recipe, so there were lots of technical difficulties, but after the third dozen we did OK. 2 dozen have been frozen and the other 3 dozen were eaten for dinner, with just butter and parmesan cheese.  The remnants of the dough were converted to spaghetti and served for dinner as well.

We had friends coming over for dinner so I pulled together: a pork roast with onions and apples, applesauce, the nettle raviolis, roasted red kuri squash, roasted beets and a salad of lettuce, kale, Hakurei turnips, carrots, a few tiny green beans, and cucumbers with a balsamic vinaigrette. They brought a fabulous flourless chocolate cake for dessert!

And, in the middle of all that cooking, we took a trip to the hardware store and carved our pumpkins.

For the record, the snow is mostly gone as of this afternoon.  Hmpf.

Pot Pie!

Leftovers never looked so good.

Chicken, a little pork, peas, noodles, onion, cream of mushroom soup and a homemade pie crust.

Served with the last farm share salad of the season, an acorn squash, and the nettle & potato soup from yesterday.