nettles

Nettle Pesto Recipe

Nettle Pesto Recipe

nao

Summer is here, the temperatures are lifting and everything green is bursting forth…. including the nettles!  Don’t despair though, behind the sting lies a very useful and beneficial plant! Young nettles are great as a diuretic, a natural anti-inflammatory (used for allergies, asthma, rheumatism) and to treat high blood pressure… to name but a few benefits!

Inspired by this years emerging crop we decided to make some nettle pesto;  Usually when I make it I tend to throw in ingredients according to my taste preferences but for the purpose of this blog post I handled things a bit more scientifically and weighed out the ingredients.  Feel free to change them at will of course, it is very much a recipe to be “personalized”!

First up…. harvest your nettles, even better if you can recruit a helper or two, this was my “helper” for the task – gloves, hat and all!

My nettle picking helper... complete with gloves!
My nettle picking helper… complete with gloves!

 

Wearing our nettle protecting gloves we headed out into the back garden and collected a large basin full of lovely nettles (harvesting the top two to three bracts)…

Our fresh nettle harvest
Our fresh nettle harvest

 

Next I removed the leaves and washed them, ending up with a colander full!

Picked, washed and ready for the pot
Picked, washed and ready for the pot

 

Next step was to blanch the nettle leaves, so they were added to a large pot of boiling water for two minutes then removed with a slotted spoon and added to iced water.

2 minutes in boiling water
2 minutes in boiling water

 

 

Then straight into iced water
Then straight into iced water

 

Then I placed all the nettles into a clean tea towel and squeeze out the water until the nettles were fairly dry

Squeezing out the nettles
Squeezing out the nettles

 

Ready to make pesto
Ready to make pesto

 

This left me with 100 g nettles, I was ready to make my pesto!

 

My ingredients…

Pesto Ingredients
Pesto Ingredients
Ingredients:

100 g preped nettles
50 g pinenuts
Juice and zest of one lemon
150 mls olive oil
30 g parmesan cheese
1 clove of garlic
Sea salt to taste
Pepper to taste

All that remained was to add all the ingredients together and blend, blitz or pound them to the preferred consistency.

Grind to your preferred consistency
Grind to your preferred consistency

 

I got about 250 g of pesto from this, nicely filling four 150 ml bottles…

The finished product!
The finished product!

 

Guess what we are having for dinner this evening?

 

Update August 2015:

I am adding this post to the #FreeFromFridays Link up, hosted this week by Dairy Free Kids. Click on the link below for lots of great Free From recipes…

 

Free From Farmhouse

 

Further reading:

Stinging nettle pesto recipe
Nettle pesto recipe
Latest science on Rooibos and Nettle Tea

Thought of the day… "when is a weed not a weed?"

Thought of the day… "when is a weed not a weed?"

nao

Some people see them as the scourge of their flower bed, others as a natural and wild source of food and medicine but what exactly is a weed and are they really just a plant growing in the wrong place?

There is no biological definition for a weed, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary’s definition is a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants.  I like dabbling in the occasional harvesting of the wild for the purpose of food, drinks and even mild medicine.  Last week we gathered some young nettles and made a delicious pesto!  I have to admit I got a great kick out of gathering something growing wild in the garden and changing it into something tasty and nutritious!  Nettles can be used very much like spinach but contain higher levels of trace elements and minerals.  They are good for detoxifying and cleansing the blood as well as reducing many ailments associated with inflammation.

Homemade nettle pest
Homemade nettle pest

Just on my doorstep (well almost) is the Corrib Lake, the second largest lake in Ireland.  Unfortunately, certain parts of the lake are currently under invasion from a non-native species – the curly-leaved waterweed (Lagarosiphon major).  This weed has become a real problem within the lake and has a negative impact on the population of brown trout for which the lake is renowned.I can’t deny I grumble about weeding, but overall I like plants that have a function other than just aesthetic pleasure and to me weeds often fall into this category.  However, there is the flip side!  Just as within the animal world, it is often not a good idea to introduce non-native species to a new environment!

So which side of the fence do you sit on when it comes to defining weeds, or are you like me, jumping back and forward depending on the weed that’s in it?

…. just a thought!