Well, it’s been another busy week, hence the lack of blogging. But I was rather pleased with myself on Monday. I have been reading The Treehouse Diaries by Nick Weston, which inspired me to do a bit of foraging and make use of the wild food larder. We are very lucky to be living on an organic farm, so unlike Nick we don’t have to worry about wild plants having been sprayed with weedkiller.
We rely heavily on pasta, which is why it’s one of our five exceptions (the others being rice, tea, spices and lemons). I thought at the start that I would have a go at making some pasta with local flour and dry it, but sadly I haven’t found time to do that.
Anyway, after the time-consuming making of tomato sauce for our pasta last week I thought it was time to have a go at making nettle pesto. I couldn’t believe how easy it was! I was really pleased with the result – delicious, and it cost virtually nothing. Here’s my recipe (a mixture of several I found online):
- Place about 10 home-grown almonds, a handful of homegrown rocket and a clove of locally-grown garlic in a food processor and ‘whizz’.
- Carefully pick a couple of handfuls of nettle tops. Shake off insects and plunge into a pan of boiling water for a few seconds, then drain and leave to cool.
- Squeeze as much water as possible out of the cooled nettles, and finely chop (by hand) the resulting squished ‘sausage’ of nettles. (If you use a food processor for this bit the pesto ends up the consistency of baby food).
- Put all above ingredients in a bowl. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, salt and pepper, and enough rapeseed oil to make it the desired consistency.
- Stir into pasta and enjoy!
You can add finely grated cheese of course, but I prefer to do this when I’m about to eat it, as there are non-cheese-eaters in my house!
Posted by Vicky