Stingin' in the Rain

Using the same chemical weapon as fire ants, there's something just a little Day-of-the-Triffids about stinging nettles.  But not to worry, they're only dangerous until you cook them.

Serve nettles cooked in red wine over fried polenta and top with some shaved parmesan.  A first course worth building a dinner party menu around.

Stinging Nettle and Polenta Starter

for the polenta

1 c. chicken stock
1 c. nettle tea (see below) or vegetable stock
generous pinch of salt
3/4 c. cornmeal
1/2 tbsp good quality olive oil
butter for pan-frying (bonus points for using your own hand-crafted butter!)


for the nettles

1 tbsp olive oil (or more or less to coat bottom of skillet)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
ground pepper to taste
salt to taste
1 dried red chili pepper, torn into pieces
1 c. blanched and drained stinging nettle leaves (see below), roughly chopped
1/4 c. red wine
1/4 c. nettle tea (see below) or water
Parmesan-Reggiano, shaved, to taste


Prepare the polenta at least 3 hours and up to 2 days ahead of time.  In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the stock, nettle tea and salt over med-high heat until boiling.  Turn down to medium, but keep the liquid at a rolling boil and slowly pour cornmeal in, stirring constantly to prevent lumps.  Turn the heat down more if the polenta is sputtering.  Continue stirring until the cornmeal is cooked and the polenta is thick.  Remove from heat.  When the mixture is no longer bubbling, stir in the olive oil.  Pour into a square baking pan (glass, non-stick, or lightly oiled), spread to corners and level out.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours to set the polenta.

(Three hours, conveniently, is enough time to go back out to pick and process another batch of stinging nettles for the freezer.)

You can tell they're good for you just by looking at the rich green colour
of the blanched stinging nettles.  They taste good too.

Prep your nettle ingredients.  Cut the polenta into 4 squares and set aside. (Trim the outside for a more even edge, the scraps can be fried as a snack or to dip in soft-cooked eggs for breakfast...)

You do have at least two skillets, right? 

Put a generous pat of butter into the pan where you plan to fry the polenta.

In your other skillet (the one you have a lid for), heat olive oil over medium-high heat.  Saute garlic and shallot until softened.  Add black pepper, salt and hot pepper and saute for another minute.  Add nettles toss until fully covered in oil and slightly wilted (1-2 minutes). 

Turn the heat under your polenta pan to medium.

Add red wine to nettles and stir until liquid has evaporated.  Turn heat down to med-low, add nettle tea, cover and cook for 5-6 minutes.

While the nettles steam, fry your polenta squares.  When the butter in your polenta pan is thin and the foam is subsiding, add the squares of polenta.  Cook 2-3 minutes on each side until heated through.  They should have a thin golden brown crust.

Remove cover from nettles and allow any remaining liquid to evaporate.

To plate, top each polenta square with 1/4 of the nettle mixture, then artfully place shaved parmesan on top.  Serve as a first course.  (This would also make a good side dish for grilled salmon or lobster.)

Nettles have a very present yet delicate flavour but none of the bitterness that many wild greens have... their defense is stinging, so they don't need to taste bad to avoid being eaten.  While the flavour is not as strong as mature spinach, but the texture is much meatier.  

~~~

There is an enormous nettle patch a short diversion from one of our favourite coastal trails.  Getting ready to head out foraging, it felt a bit insane choosing to go out gathering food in the famous Newfoundland rain, drizzle and fog... especially knowing that when we returned, we'd be cold and damp and the dogs would inevitably smell like, well, wet dogs.

Bella and Sam are inevitably "helpful" when we're foraging.
To save them from their loyal and eager-to-please selves,
we tethered them away from the stinging nettle patch.
Bella was smart enough to take advantage of the tree and
get out of the rain.  Sam, on the other hand...

But if you always wait for perfect weather to go outside, you might rarely leave your house.  (Especially if live on an island in the North Atlantic.)  You'd miss out on the magic of being in water-saturated air... sure, it's wet, but the colour of the rocks and trees and birds is deeper and fuller and sound travels with more richness.  The reduced visibility makes the world a bit smaller and cozier.

As we were wading, drenched, through the knee-high patch of nettle, snapping of the tops of the plants, we heard the drone of an outboard motor halt.  It's funny how sometimes you only hear a noise because it stops.  The motor cut and was followed by the hollow thump-thump of lobster pots being checked.  The motor starts, then stops, thump-thump, thump-thump, repeat.  The rhythm of that work is very distinct to the ear and even though we both knew what we were listening to, we looked up anyway, because that's what you do.  

As though waiting for us to turn away from the nettles, a massive bald eagle suddenly flew close enough and low enough we could distinguish the yellowish-whites of its eyes.  An eagle beside us, a lobster boat below us, a couple of great big bags full of nettle... that's exactly why we were out in the rain instead of bundled up on the couch watching the new season of Orange is the New Black.

~~~

Identifying and handling stinging nettle (Urtica spp.)

Nettles tend to grow in patches and can often be spotted by the change
in texture they create.

Stinging nettle is most commonly found in disturbed and disused areas.  Old pastures, abandoned properties, gardens, the edges of your composter, fence lines...  it's also found on roadsides, but don't bother looking there, you don't want the contamination from exhaust fumes anyway.

The easiest way to identify a nettle is by touching it.  If you've ever walked through a patch of tall weeds when wearing short pants, only to find your legs prickling with fire, you've encountered stinging nettle.  The touch-method is not recommended.  Head out dressed for the job: long pants, long sleeves, gloves.

Since it was rain-drizzle-and-fogging the day we went out searching for nettle, in addition to pocketing a pair of rubberized gloves, I wore my rain suit.  Rain jacket, rain pants, rubber boots.  No matter that we've lived in rural Newfoundland for over 6 years, Fefe Noir's fashion rules irrationally exclude rain pants.  She refers to them as my "plastic trousers" and rolls her eyes at me whenever I put them on.  But who got the last laugh?  Not only did I stay dry, but as we were wading through a field of nettle, Fefe discovered that you can, indeed, be stung by nettle through a pair of jeans.

(But wait, between that handicap and her photo-taking duties, I ended up doing most of the actual harvesting...)

Stinging nettles are easily identified by touch, but try to avoid finding them that way.  Look for slender plants with large, toothed leaves in opposite pairs.  The stems and leaves are fuzzy from being covered in stinging hairs.

Nettles are tall plants with slender stems and paired leaves.  The leaves are broad but come to a definite point on the ends and the edges are toothed.  The leaves and stem are covered in tiny hairs.  The flowers are green-ish and hang in clusters, but you don't need to know that much: if it's already flowering, it's too late in the year (but write the location down somewhere so you can come back next year, earlier).

Wear rubberized gloves when you pick stinging nettle.
For older plants (over 20 cm high), snap off the top
15-20 cm only.

USE HEAVY RUBBERIZED GLOVES when you pick them.  Take the whole above-ground part of the plant if it is really young (less than 20 cm high); if the plant is older but not yet flowering, pick the top 15-20 cm.  A lot of people use scissors or garden shears for harvesting, but we found it awkward to hold kitchen scissors with our big rubberized gloves, so just broke the stem off with gloved fingers for efficiency's sake.

Once you're home and ready to process the nettles, keep your gloves on while you break off the top young leaves and pull the older leaves from the stem.  Toss the stems and rejected leaves (brown, moth-eaten, bruised) into your composter.  Blanch the nettle in saltwater to neutralize the sting, and squeeze the nettle tea from them.  Hank Shaw provides a very good description of processing stinging nettles, so I will direct you there rather than taking up unnecessary space.  Save the nettle tea for this recipe, or to use as a substitute for vegetable broth in all sorts of dishes.

We All Like a Little Weed Now and Then

If you can't beat 'em...

Seriously, you won't ever win.  The best thing you can do with dandelions is pull them out by the roots, then eat them.

Cranberry Beans with Dandelion Greens

It's getting close to the end of storage season, but sweet
local carrots can still be found.

1-1/4 c. dried cranberry beans (or dried pinto beans)
1 carrot
1 shallot
1/4 tsp salt
5 cups chicken stock (use vegetable stock if you're a vegetarian, water will do in a pinch but it won't turn out as well)
1 big bowl full of dandelion greens
1 tbsp pork fat (or lamb drippings or olive oil, in case you're a vegetarian)
1 clove garlic julienned  

Don't bother peeling the carrot and shallot, you'll remove
these before eating.

a splash of dry vermouth (or dry white wine)

Soak beans in water overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly.

Wash carrot and shallot, leaving the skins on.  Put beans, carrot, and shallot in a large saucepan.  Add salt and stock.  Bring to a boil over medium heat; reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender (approximately 2 hours).  Remove carrot and shallot and continue cooking to desired consistency.

The larger, darker and pointier a dandelion leaf, the more
bitter it will be.  That's great for cooked greens.  Save the
smaller, paler and rounder leaves for eating raw.

While the beans are cooking, wash dandelion greens several times (like 4 or 5 times, soaking in between) in cold salted water.  This is particularly important if you were enthusiastic when weeding, leaving the dandelions covered in soil and detritus like we did...  Pick over carefully, watching out for precocious slugs and other early season pests.  Feel free to be choosy about the leaves, dandelion aren't precious and it's not like you paid for them.  Dry the leaves in a salad spinner or by lightly rolling in clean tea towels.  (Don't forget to reserve any unopened buds for making capers.)

When the beans are very nearly done*, heat pork fat** in a skillet over med-high.  When the fat is good and hot, saute dandelion greens until wilted add the garlic and saute for a minute.  Deglaze with vermouth***.

*Or if you made them a day ahead, reheat when you are ready to cook the dandelion greens.

**The first time Fefe made this dish, she used drippings from a pork roast.  The next time she made it, she tossed the pork fat into the pan then thought it smelled strangely like lamb fat... which it was... sometimes it's hard to keep track of the various jars of drippings in the refrigerator.  The good news is that both work.

***The first time Fefe made this dish, she used vermouth to deglaze the dandelion pan.  The next time, as she was recovering from the shock of the lamb fat incident, she quickly grabbed the vermouth bottle only to discover it was empty.  Luckily, there was some white wine handy.  Luckily further, white wine also does a lovely job in this recipe.

Dandelion leaves will wilt fairly quickly in a hot pan, so wait until the beans are ready before cooking them.

Serve your delicious dandelion greens over the beans as a side for lamb chops or as a hearty lunch with crusty bread. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

~~~

Yes indeed, it's dandelion season again.

If you've been reading this blog word for word like I expect you to do (right?), you'll know we've had a slow start to spring.  Here we are in mid-May and this week we woke up to a crust of ice.  Not frost, actual ice.  A thick layer coating the entire surface of the visible world.

The snow shovels are prominently displayed on our front
porch as a charm to ward off further snow.  It didn't work
all winter, so I'm not sure why I think it will work now, but
I feel it will...

No matter, the ground itself has thawed, so it's time to call an abrupt stop to all indoor projects and take advantage of the short northern growing season on this cold Atlantic island.  As not to unnecessarily jinx this reprieve, we can't yet put the snow shovels away.  We've even moved them out to the front porch where the afternoon sun illuminates them: our talisman against rogue late-May snowstorms.

It's time to catch up on the work we didn't do last fall.  Prune the perennials that need pruning before they start growing and prep the garden beds.  Which means weeding.  And, oh, boy, do the weeds ever take advantage of any bit of open space.  

While you're out there madly digging, hoeing, forking or raking the weeds out of your vegetable beds, reserve the dandelion.  Be brutal and get them out by the roots, but put them aside because they're good eating. The earlier you can do this in spring, the more tender and less bitter the dandelion leaves will be.  For this dish, a bit of bitterness works well, so later season dandelion is also suitable.

Seriously, it's like if you turn your head away for a moment,
more dandelions suddenly appear.

If you don't have vegetable plot, I suspect you can find dandelion in your lawn or flower gardens.  No yard?  No worries.  Dandelion can be found pretty much anywhere that soil has been disturbed.  Go for a walk with a trowel and a basket; avoid foraging on roadsides (you don't need any exhaust or road salt in your food) but take advantage of trails and hedgerows or cooperative neighbours.  You may even come across an enthusiastic lawn-owner with a wheel barrow full of dandelion already plucked from the ground.  

Save the smallest, roundest leaves for salad and pesto.  Use the older, darker, pointier leaves as cooked greens (like in this recipe).   The unopened flower buds make excellent capers.  For a plant so universally hated, it's pretty magical.

Even cats like dandelion.  Or do they hate dandelion?  Can't remember.

A Cheese Board with a View

So it's November and chilly and rainy and full of autumn-nearing-winter-ness, that doesn't mean you can't picnic.  Take a fancy cheese plate somewhere with a good sunset view.

Potato cracker with Alexis de Portneuf's La Sauvigne, Keep Calm and Eat On's Debjani's chutney and some toasted wild beaked hazelnuts.

Still buzzing from the recent Wine Show and having been reminded by a meal at Chinched Bistro that there's more to cheese and crackers than cheese and crackers, we bring you:

A Cheese Course for the Canadian Outdoors

Although we highly recommend taking this outside, it will work nearly as well at a fancy-dress-up dinner party or in your pjs on your couch during a marathon of Ru Paul's Drag Race.

We made our own cheese board by picking up a flat piece of slate on day when we were out walking... we took it home, scrubbed it up and sealed it with olive oil.  I won't guarantee it's food safe, but it's awful pretty, it was very nearly free, and neither of us seem to be suffering ill effects.

For the cheese:

Use this as an excuse to buy a bunch of good looking cheeses.  We typically like to include at least three or four from a range of textures and ages.  Canadians are producing a lot of good cheese these days and if you do a bit of work to find it, you may be surprised at how much more there is than mild cheddar. We purchased a really nice selection of cheese, all from Quebec, at Belbin's (a local independent grocer, which is the next best thing to local cheese):



La Sauvagine (soft)  and Tilsit (semi-soft) from La Fromagerie Alexis de Portneuf

Mont Gleason Emmenthal (semi-hard) from La Fromagerie 1860 du Village

Bleu Benedictin (blue) from Saint-Benoit du Lac Fromagerie



  

For the accompaniments:

Plan a variety of complimentary flavours covering some basics: sweet, sour, spicy, nutty.  We used:

Apple jelly

Dried feral apple rings

Late Summer Chutney, a handmade gift from Debjani of Keep Calm and Eat On (for the record, not only does she have a beautiful blog, but she is a real pleasure to talk to)

Olive oil toasted beaked hazelnuts (see below for instructions)


For the crackers:

Because we're those people, we made our own potato crackers.  Try it yourself, we promise that you won't be disappointed.  They have a down-to-earth flavour but won't compete with the cheeses.

For the wine:

Quite frankly, pick a wine you enjoy or you've been wanting to try or is recommended by the helpful people at your local liquor store.  Outside in the chilly air, it might have been advisable to pick a white wine, but cool weather = red wine weather.  Yeah, you aren't supposed to chill red wine, but it turns out that if it's not too heavy on the tannins (e.g. beaujolais, simple valpolicella, pinot noir), a chill doesn't really hurt it .  If it's very cold out, tuck the bottle in your jacket.  No matter what you do, if you are outside, it will taste like camping wine (and don't misread me: there is absolutely nothing wrong with camping wine), so pick something you like but in the lower end of your price range.

Sit back and relax and enjoy the autumn sunset.

 Olive Oil Toasted Beaked Hazelnuts

2 tbsp olive oil
dried beaked hazelnuts, shelled
salt

Heat oil in a cast iron skillet on medium-high (use more than 2 tbsp if your skillet is large; don't worry about having too much, you can use it later).  When it's hot, put the nuts in the pan and turn the heat down to medium.  Stir frequently with a wooden spoon until nuts are golden brown in colour.  Remove from heat and strain oil into a heat proof container through a wire sieve.  Salt the nuts in the sieve and toss to coat.  Let cool before eating.

The remaining olive oil, cooled, makes for a good base for dressing your next salad.

You can substitute other raw nuts.  The hand-picked and painstakingly peeled and shelled wild hazelnuts are best, but olive oil toasted almonds are very good too.

~~~

When we moved to Newfoundland from Ontario, we drove across the country, crammed in to our '91 Tbird with all our earthly belongings during a serious summer heat wave with a stuck-forever-shut passenger-side window.  You're right, that is a spacious car, but earthly belongings plus camping equipment plus a good-sized dog take up a surprising lot of room.  When we got to North Sydney (way too early to line up for the ferry) we were hot and exhausted and hungry.  So we drove around looking for a shade tree .  If you've ever taken the ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, and can recall the landscape near the dock, you will have a sense of how difficult this task was.

We did eventually find a tree.  Granted, it was a short skinny tree but acceptable because it had a picnic table to provide shade for the dog.  It quickly became apparent that we were a source of some amusement, given how many people were slowing down and staring at us.  We were a bit puzzled and becoming a bit worried.  Then, as Fefe was juicing a lemon and I was pressing garlic over our freshly chopped greek salad, it hit us:  when you bring sheep's milk feta and kalamata olives to a picnic (never mind a garlic press), you might be interpreted as putting on airs.  Those girls are from Toronto for sure; no doubt about it.  I hoped they packed enough olives for the trip because they won't find any* where they're headed.

*That was true 11 years ago, but is not true now.  We used to get Fefe Noir's mother to mail vaccuum packed kalamata olives; these days we can buy them just about anywhere, though not necessarily whenever we want.  Buying them in 4 liter jars reduces the likelihood of being without for any length of time.

We still take our picnicking seriously.

For one thing, since being outdoors is it's own reward, eating outdoors is like winning best-of-show.  We are like the mythical postal service when it comes to picnicking: sun, rain, sleet, snow, hail, cold, hot, humid, windy... it doesn't matter.  I have a very strong memory of a particular early spring hike where it was so cold the olive oil in the dolmades had solidified.  Did I say dolmades?  Yes, that's the other thing: eating outdoors is a great excuse for really really good finger food.

So, as you can see, the rapidly encroaching evening darkness and chilly temperatures don't dissuade us from heading out to a favourite picnic spot to enjoy wine and cheese while the loons call in the sunset. 

Cheers!

Les Pommes de Terre & les Pommes de l'Arbre

In the continuing effort to make good use of the bounty of feral apples, we've made an apple ketchup.  Serendipitously, we've recently found some locally grown blue-right-through potatoes.  A match of epic greatness: blue potato oven fries with spicy apple ketchup.

Blue Potato Oven Fries

4 medium-smallish blue potatoes
2-3 tsp avocado oil*
1 tsp salt

*or use another oil with a high smoke point (like safflower or peanut)

Preheat oven to 450F.

Not just blue-skinned, these lovelies have a beautiful
purple-y-blue flesh as well.

Pour boiling water into a heat proof bowl large enough, but leaving room, for the potatoes.  Wash potatoes, leaving the skin on and cut into french-fry-sized sticks.  Drop the cut potatoes into hot water and let sit until edges are just softened (but not soft).  When the oven has reached temperature, drain potatoes and pat dry with a clean tea towel.  Rinse and dry the bowl (or get out a new one, but why make more dirty dishes than necessary?).  Place the potatoes in the bowl, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and mix until fully covered.

Arrange on a baking tray lined with parchment paper in a single layer.  Turn oven down to 425F and bake for 22 minutes, turning after 12.  Total baking time will depend a bit on how thinly you sliced them, and the particular variety and age of potato used... so rely on your instincts as much as our guidance.  When they are done they will be cooked through and look browned and blistery.  Which is a long way of saying: when done, they will look like french fries.

Feral Apple Ketchup

Adapted from Marguerite Patten's 500 Recipes: Jams Pickles Chutneys


Use the pulp you put aside after making apple jelly:

After making apple jelly, run the contents of the cheesecloth
through a food mill to obtain apple pulp for this recipe.

for each 2 lbs apple pulp:
1 onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
2/3 c. malt vinegar
2-1/2 tbsp cider vinegar
1-1/4 tsp coarse salt
3/4 tsp pickling spice
1 tsp curry powder (the commercial americanized stuff will do, but bonus points for using your own)
1/2 tsp tumeric
1-2 dried hot chili peppers, crushed between fingers to release the seeds (we used gundu chilis, but any dried red chili will probably do)
3 oz. organic cane sugar
2 pint or 4 half-pint jars, sterilized

Put onion, garlic, vinegars, salt and spices into a heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Bring to a boil and cook at a slow boil until onion and garlic are soft.  Stir in apple pulp and return to a boil then remove from heat.

Working in batches, run the mixture through a food mill with the smallest-holed plate (or press through a sieve).  Return to heat and boil slowly until the desired consistency is reached.  Because the pulp has already had most of its liquid drained, it may be done almost as quickly as it reaches a boil.

Pour or ladle into sterilized jars and heat process for 10 minutes at sea level.  If you've made a small batch, skip the heat processing and store in the refrigerator.

~~~

~~~

Lately we have fallen in love with the Adirondack Blue potato variety grown locally at Lester's Farm in St. John's, NL (if you're in the St. John's NL area, they also sell Adirondack Reds which also carry the colour through the flesh).  Admittedly, a good part of that love is superficial and entirely related to the beautiful purple-blue colour, but it's also a good potato: not too starchy, not mealy but not too wet.  We can attest that it's lovely boiled or roasted and it makes some of the best oven fries we've ever done.  That said, the success of the fries depends largely on using a an oil with a high smoke point: these are baked at 425F which is too high for olive or canola oil if that's what you're used to.  Splash out for avocado oil if you can (something too bitter for salad oil, by the way... which surprised us because avocados are delicious raw... but is a fantastic cooking oil).  We bought ours half-price when the nearby chain grocery was clearing it out (the bad news, we can't even buy it full priced there any more).

This whole pairing really started with the feral apples we've I've been picking compulsively.  Fefe Noir has been busy making dried apple rings and using the scraps from the apple rings and the apples too small for drying for making jelly.  Which leaves a great big mass of skins and seeds and stems and pulp.  There's a lot of goodness still in there which we didn't want to waste.  After running it through the food mill, the texture reminds me of extra-thick tamarind paste... so I told Fefe Noir she should make a samosa dipping sauce.  She looked at me.  You know that look? The one when someone's been all day in the kitchen, overheated from canning, then in all the excitement of preserves and jars and steam you innocently come up with a really good idea for more preserves and suggest it?  Oh yes, that's the look she gave me.  So I quietly milled the apples and put them in the freezer. (The remaining skins, seeds and stems fed our composter.)

The next morning, flipping through a recipe book over breakfast, I happened across instructions for apple ketchup.  Simply to prove I wasn't crazy thinking that the apple pulp would make a nice savoury sauce, I wrote a note that said "APPLE KETCHUP, p. 70!" before I left for work.  Instead of trying to convey the phone call I got later that morning, I will assume that you are smart enough to catch my error...

You will be glad to know, however, that I did step up and make some ketchup.  Yes, I got in the way in the kitchen, mucked up plans for an uneventful evening, and created general chaos.  But even Fefe will admit this ketchup was absolutely and completely worth the headache of it's manifestation.  I'm not sure it's the right thing for samosas, but apple ketchup will certainly elevate your french fries, burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches.