All-egg pasta

and some talk of nettles

I first learned how easy and satisfying it is to prepare a batch of hand-rolled pasta when, shortly after release from a dismal boarding-school on the Welsh borders about a hundred years ago, I found myself in Florence.  My mother - widowed in WW2 and remarried to a career diplomat on the Latin American circuit - didn't approve of university for girls and sent me, as was the way in the late 1950's for those of us destined to find ourselves suitable husbands in the London Season, to finishing school. Florence and Paris were considered suitable - strictly supervised, of course. 

         There were half a dozen of us trainee debutantes in the Pensione della Madonna in central Florence, where we were loosely overseen by an elderly English countess. Our landlady, Micaela, fed us all magnificently every evening with the dishes she had learned from her mother. She distrusted anything she had not prepared herself, and paid daily visits to the piazza del mercato to choose what we would eat that day. 

         Once the countess had seen us safely posted into our art-history lectures in the Uffizi gallery every morning, I would sometimes manage to slip out into the city to find Micaela in the market, and return with her to help with whatever was happening in the kitchen. Which is where I learned that Italian cooking is not a matter of recipes but of what your mother taught you. And that every region - household, city, town, hamlet - has its own version of what’s set on the table, even something as universally popular as pasta. 

          Micaela had no use for kitchen machinery, apart from a pestle and mortar. A table-knife of raw iron with a blade as sharp as a razor was used for peeling and chopping, and a long thin rolling pin (possibly a broom-handle) for rolling pastry and pasta. Everything was measured by the handful or pinch, and she had no use for a mixing bowl to make pasta since the eggs were cracked directly into a well in the flour on a wooden board placed over the sink.   When there were nettles for sale in the market, ravioli con le ortiche was on the menu. And once the nettles were blanched and squeezed dry, the nettle water was saved as a tonic for summer colds - nothing ever went to waste in Micaela’s kitchen.

         In the parks of London - my gathering-grounds after returning more than half a century to the city where I was born - nettles are already popping their furry heads among last year's dried-out growth.  I proceed with caution.  There are rules and regulations that apply to what can and can't be done in city parks - best not ask. And I take care to avoid areas favoured by dog-walkers as well as those patrolled by municipal gardeners with weed-killer (a hazard later in the year, less so in spring). Medicinally, Urtica dioica comes well-recommended. There's practically nothing, according to herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, that can't be cured by some part of the miraculous plant in some form or other, from root to stalk to leaf.

To gather nettles for the pot, choose a patch of bright new growth and snip off the tender tops with scissors (wear gloves - however young, they sting). Once cropped, the roots will continue to sprout. Even after the tassel-like flowerhead has formed, you can still use full-grown leaves from the upper part. To prepare, strip the leaves from the stalk - the fibres are tough and stringy and were used to make strong thread. Rinse well and cook briefly in a lidded pan in the water that clings to the leaves (the sting vanishes as soon as heat is applied). Thereafter treat as spinach - the colour is a little darker, the flavour a little more iron-y and the texture a tad chewier, but otherwise no one will know the difference unless you confess (people can be weird about foraged foods).

Not so in eastern Europe - particularly the Balkans - where they're a semi-cultivated crop. In France, les ortilles are part of the traditional spring gathering, la cueillette. In Turkey, they’re combined with fresh curd cheese as a filling for boreki.  In Russia, nettle borscht is the traditional Easter dish sour cream and hard-boiled eggs. In Italy, they’re used in all manner of pasta dishes, paticularly ravioli, but also as a simple dressing with olive oil and garlic. And in Britain, Dorothy Hartley lists the traditional farmhouse nettle-recipe as a main-course soup with bacon and barley.

         Gardeners know and value the nettle-patch as an edible nursery for infant butterflies. Nettles grow particularly prolifically around human habitation because they like a generous dose of uric acid in the soil - you could say they’re our closest plant-companion for good reason. The evidence is slow to fade: archeologists know a nettle-patch in an empty field is a reason to start digging.

                           Ravioli alla fiorentina con le ortiche

Although anything Florentine is usually an indication of the presence of spinach, other green possibilities include borage leaves, beet-tops, dandelion-leaves, young poppy-rosettes and bladder-wort.

Serves 3-4 as a primo piatto

350g home-made all-egg pasta

About 250g nettle-leaves, de-stalked

3-4 tablespoons fresh ricotta

1-2 tablespoon finely - grated hard cheese (parmesan, pecorino)

Pinch of  grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Butter to finish

Wrap the pasta-dough in clingfilm and set it aside while you prepare the filling.

          Pick over the nettle-leaves, and cook them briefly - 3-4 minutes - in a lidded pan in the water which clings to the leaves after rinsing. Drain thoroughly (squeeze with your hands - they won't sting), chop finely, mix thoroughly with the two cheeses and season with a little salt, pepper and nutmeg.

         Cut the dough in half and roll each piece out on a well-floured board with a well-floured rolling pin - it should be so thin you can see the grain of the table. Either mark the dough in bite-sized squares, or use a wine-glass or cookie-cutter to cut circles, diameter 6-7cm.  Drop a scant teaspoon of the filling onto each alternate square, or on one side of each circle, dampen the edges, and then fold over the other side, pressing to seal the edges. Continue until the dough and filling are all used up.

         Bring a large pan of salted water to a rolling boil, throw in as many  ravioli as will comfortably float on the surface, and cook for 4-5 minutes, until the pasta is tender (the stuffing is cooked already, so need only be heated through). Remove the ravioli carefully with a draining spoon into a warm bowl, and dress with a little melted butter. 

         Accompany with a chunk of hard cheese and a grater.