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.

Dandelion "Three Ways" Pizza

(I love when chefs on those reality cooking contest shows make things "three ways", so the name derives from that, they're just sensibly all in one bite, not spread out pretentiously across a platter.)

1 recipe dandelion flower pizza dough (see below)
a handful or two of semolina or corn meal
1 recipe dandelion green pesto (at room temperature so it's spreadable)
grated or crumbled feta cheese (preferably sheep's milk feta, unless you have a different preference)
1-2 large shallots, thinly sliced
1 tbsp (or more or less) dandelion capers
fresh ground black pepper to taste

Pre-heat the oven and a pizza stone on the lowest shelf to 450F.  If you don't have a pizza stone, don't panic.  You can use a baking sheet instead, but use second-to-bottom shelf or higher up.  There is a certain je ne sais quoi that will be missing from the baking sheet technique, but quite frankly if you've never used a pizza stone, you won't know what you're missing, so you won't miss it.  Ignorance is bliss and all that.  (Pizza stones are not terribly expensive and WILL change your life, so consider buying one.)

A batch of dandelion flower pizza dough will make about 4 individual pizzas (the plate in the picture is a pretty ordinary sized dinner plate).  So, divide dough into 4 portions and roll out on a semolina or cornmeal dusted board to a 7 or 8 inch diameter pizza base.  Let rise, covered by a damp cloth, until obviously thickened (~20 minutes in a warm house).  You can use as much of the dough as you need and store the remainder in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Spread pesto on your risen pizza dough.  The toppings of the pizza will weigh down the dough where you put them, allowing the dough where they are missing to rise more during cooking, resulting in the relatively thick pizza crust.  This is important to know so you can decide how widely to spread your pesto... it depends entirely on how much crust you want.

Cover the pesto layer with feta, cover the feta with shallot, sprinkle dandelion capers over the shallot.  Add fresh ground pepper to taste.  The toppings in the ingredient list will do for about 4 individual pizzas, so adjust for the number of servings you are preparing.  Since pizza is really photogenic at this stage, here's what ours looked like:

Slide your pizza onto the pizza stone. This sounds easy, it often is, but sometimes things go wrong... so take a deep breath and find your zen center or whatever you do to calm yourself.  The semolina or cormeal on the board will help with the slide; you may want a spatula (or clean broad putty knife) on hand to help get the pizza moving.  If you have put a lot of toppings on, these might weigh it down and make it difficult to slide, so be aware.  Hover the board just over where you want the pizza to be, slide the pizza forward as you pull the board back and voila, you pizza should land well.  This is now going to sound very cheeky, but: do try to do this swiftly so you don't lose too much oven heat.

Bake for 12-16 minutes until crust is golden brown, cheese is melty and shallots are just a bit crispy in parts.

Dandelion Flower Pizza Dough

1 c. yellow dandelion fluff
2 c. unbleached white all-purpose flour + 1/2 c. as needed + more for kneading as kneaded (heh)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. hot water (tap-hot, no hotter)
2-1/4 tsp active dry yeast (traditional)
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp unfiltered extra virgin olive oil (filtered will also work, as will non-virgins)

If you can't get the dandelions out, roots and all, before they flower, the least you can do is remove the flowers before they seed, right?  To collect the dandelion fluff, pick a bunch of dandelion flowers (avoid the ones with insects) and chop off the green end, leaving you with the lovely yellow fluffy part (petals, nectar, pollen, etc.)... do this until you have 1 cup's worth.  Work quickly so they don't brown.

In a large bowl, mix together dandelion fluff, 2 c. flour and salt.

In a heat proof bowl, mix sugar into hot water, sprinkle yeast over water to proof.  When the yeast is foamy, you are good to go.  If it doesn't foam try again with slightly cooler water (in case it was too hot)... if it still doesn't foam, chances are good you need to toss out your dud yeast and make a trip to the store.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the yeast mixture and oil.  Stir flour mixture in gradually until smooth and elastic.  Stir in more flour, a handful. at a time until you have a soft dough.

Turn out onto a well floured surface; knead until dough is smooth and starts to push back at you (5-10 minutes). Add flour as you need it (i.e. add flour if it gets sticky).  When it's ready, if you poke it, the imprint should slowly but absolutely, surely fill back in.

Rub a little olive oil on your hands and rub your hands over the surface of the dough.  Cover loosely with a damp cloth and let rest until doubled in bulk (30-60 minutes, thereabouts, depending on how warm and how moist your house is... ours is bloody freezing so we could be waiting for a couple of hours or more).  Punch down and knead lightly to remove trapped air bubbles; let rest for 10 minutes.  Now it's ready to use.

~~~

Given the success of drawing dandelion flavour out in our vodka infusion, we decided to give it a try as a bread flavour.  A quick Google search indicated other people had also tried this, so we figured that if we were crazy, at least we had company.  Our first attempt was with whole wheat flour, but whole wheat competes too heavily with the dandelion flavour... it also just isn't nearly as pretty because that beautiful yellow gets lost.  So really, use white flour.

The taste of dandelion bread is difficult to describe.  It tastes different than regular-arsed pizza dough.  Sunnier?  Buttery?  Floral-y and nectar-y?  Depends how many martinis you tasted beforehand...

The three-ways of dandelion in one dish might sound overwhelming, but we think it works, not just as a novelty, but as a dish.  And any day that ends with fewer dandelions in the yard than it started with is a good day.

Dandelion Pesto

The Food Under Your Feet.

1/3 c. almonds (or whatever nut you have in your pantry)

2 c. loosely packed dandelion greens

3/8 c. olive oil

3 (or more or less) cloves garlic

1/4 tsp coarse salt

1/3 c. (or more or less) grated parmesan; the sort you grate yourself, not that crap in the green tube...

In a blender or food processor, grind almonds to a fine consistency but stop before it becomes butter.  Dump out of blender into a bowl and set aside.

Roughly chop dandelion greens and discard big stems.

In the blender, process greens with 1/4 c. olive oil until well broken down.  Add garlic, salt, cheese and reserved ground nuts and process until desired consistency, adding more oil as needed.

We have a blender, so this is sometimes a bit of a challenge, but if you have a food processor, then, well, man, you're golden.

Right then, a note about dandelion greens.  The older and more pointy the edges and the later in the growing season, the more bitter they will taste.  So if you are sensitive to bitter greens in a negative way, then carefully select the smallest, roundest, palest, leaves and trim the stems well.  If you have a penchant for bitter greens, then, well, chuckle quietly at those spending several hours to pick a couple of cups of greens while you haul whole plants out of the garden, tearing the leaves from the limp, conquered enemy...

A note about the almonds.  We've made this pesto three times this spring.  The first time we used pine nuts, the second time we used walnuts, the third time we used almonds (the picture is from the almond version).  Every attempt was successful and tasty.

Garlic.  We really like garlic.  Three cloves might be too much for you if you are garlic-shy.  But don't forget that garlic is really good for you... raw garlic is especially good for you... and just about everyone in the known universe is a fan of garlic to some degree, so if you smell like garlic, it can only result in you being even more popular and attractive than you already are.

The beauty of this pesto is you can customize it to your taste.  By which I mean, make it however you want, roughly following the quantities and instructions. More oil will make it thinner, different oil (like walnut oil) will give it a different flavour.  Extra cheese or less cheese or none at all will make it variously suitable for your vegan or lactose intolerant friends and family.  What the hell, even use a different green.   Toss it with pasta. Use it as a condiment or sandwich spread or dip. Use it as a base for pizza.

The Dandelion Martini

2 oz. dandelion-infused vodka (below), straight from the freezer
3 dandelion capers, it has to be 3, because 3 is sexy

Pour vodka into martini glass, garnish with capers.
Best served in the middle of your dandelion-infested lawn.  Drink and think about the diaspora of dandelion through the known universe.

The dandelion infused vodka was adapted from Dazed and Infused's recipe.

Pour an inch of vodka in the bottom of a clean, dry, mason jar.  Use good vodka for this. Cheap vodka is for Ceasars and teenagers.  If it comes with a free hat, it's cheap.

Pick two really big handfuls of dandelion flowers, carefully avoiding bugs, then chop the green end off, pull the yellow fluffy part out.  The yellow fluffy part goes in the jar with the vodka; keep adding yellow fluff until the jar is about 2/3 full.

Top up with vodka.  Leave on the counter near a window for 2 days (if you live in a warm sunny climate) or 3 days (if you live in Newfoundland).  Put it in the fridge to make it a week. On day 7, strain into a new clean jar and store in the freezer.

Once it's good and cold, go ahead and make that martini.

~~~

Since Dazed and Infused doesn't have tasting notes for this, here's what we thought of it:  totally drinkable.  Fefe thought it had a sweet note... she described it as floral-y and nectar-y.  caribougrrl thought the taste was reminiscent of very very ripe cantaloupe   Fefe continues to drink dandelion martinis, caribougrrl is happy to leave it in the freezer.

Dandelion Capers (quick-pickled dandelion flower buds)

Adapted from Wildcraft Vita's recipe


1/3 c. dandelion buds (or more or less... it takes a long time to find the perfect low to the ground fully closed buds)
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp salt (plus some for soaking)
white vinegar to fill teensy caper-sized jar 

This is a multi-tasking opportunity.  

Take your weeding tool of choice and hoik out dandelions from your garden or lawn.  Remove the tiny dandelion buds... these are the buds at the base of the plant, not the ones that have started to rise up in the air.  Discard the rest of the plant, but not into your composter (unless you want to exponentially increase your dandelion crop in future).

Remove stem and dark green outer leaves (caribougrrl would like to point out that these are the sepals, not technically leaves).

Soak buds in salted water for 5-10 minutes to get rid of any bugs that might be there.  Strain and put into the bottom of small but clean and dry jar.

Sprinkle sugar and salt over buds.  Let sit for a while.  Do some more multi-tasking of some nature.  When you remember the sugared and salted buds, fill the jar with vinegar and put the lid on.

Let sit at room temperature for 2-3 days, then keep in fridge.  They are ready to eat within a week.  Don't store for too long, but they are in salt and vinegar so don't panic.

~~~

We LOVE quick pickles.  We love capers.  When we heard that pickled dandelion buds were kind of like capers, we were all over that.

Pickle 'em quick and eat 'em quick.  That's our motto (at least since Fefe read Carol Sheild's novel Larry's Party).  We do sometimes make shelf preserves, but Fefe is terrified to serve those to other people, we keep all the risk within the household.

At any rate, we were partly surprised to taste them and find out they really are like capers.  So save yourself the $3 a jar and use them like you would use capers (with smoked fish, pasta puttanesca, tapanade, pizza...).  They make a lovely garnish for a dandelion martini.