Mayonnaise made easy...

...and spring thoughts on nettles, dandelions and bittercress (what else?)

Look on the bright sight (aways): spring is on its way and the first green leaves of spring are popping above the parapet - at least in the northern hemisphere - which means there'll shortly be a pressing need for hard-boiled eggs and home-made mayonnaise. Meanwhile, no time to lose.

Nettles: Urtica dioica flourishes wherever there’s human habitation and are the first to appear in spring and last to leave at the beginning of winter. To archeologists, a nettle-patch is clear evidence of what’s gone before. For the first gatherings, wear gloves and snip off the tender tops with scissors - however young, they sting. To crop a regular supply of young nettles, pop an upturned bucket over new growth, gather regularly and the patch will renew will itself well into summer. To prepare for the pot, strip the greens from the stalks and cook briefly in a lidded pan in the water that clings to the leaves after washing. The sting vanishes as soon as heat is applied, while the flavour is indistinguishable from spinach – perhaps a little chewier, and flavoured more strongly with iron. Traditionally in the old days - well into the nineteenth century in the UK - nettle-stalks provided strong fibres for thread and soft garments for babies. Eaten as a foraged food in Sweden when there’s snow still on the ground, and as a semi-cultivated crop in the Balkans, throughout Eastern Europe and northern Europe - where nettle soup is an Easter dish eaten with cream and hard-boiled eggs. In France, les ortilles are on the menu in high-end restaurants such as Paul Bocuse, while in Italy, nettles are a traditional stuffing for pasta. In the farmhouses of Britain, nettles were a popular main-course soup with bacon and barley until after WW2. Each to his own.

 

Dandelions: Taraxacum officinale pops up its pretty little head at the first signs of spring, delivering dainty little seed-puffs on tiny parachutes long before other plants have even begun to flower.  In France, dandelion-greens are field-grown and sold by weight in spidery clumps in farmers’ markets as the first salad-leaves of the year. Valued for their diuretic properties - hence their inelegant common name, pis-en-lit, pee-in-the-bed – they’re eaten in salads and as cooked vegetables throughout the northern hemisphere. In Korea, Japan and China, they’re gathered as ‘mountain greens’ at a price to match. All parts of the plant - leaves, roots, flowers – are edible. Commercially, the leaves are prepared by cellaring – blanching the young growth by depriving it of light, as for Belgian endives, witloof.  To blanch your own supply of salad leaves, drop an upturned flowerpot over a young dandelion rosette and leaving it for a week or two, until it loses most of the characteristic bitterness, then slice with a knife right across the crown and the root will spring back with new growth. The flowers, a secondary crop that appears when the leaves are past their sell-by date, open only in daylight and none too early at that - not at all if the day is dull.  The flavour of the flowers is delicately sweet: sprinkle the petals over a salad, or use them to flavour and colour a jelly. Or fritter the whole flowerheads as a dessert – gorgeous with trickle of warm honey. To crop the roots next year, wait till early winter when leaf-growth has died back and the plant’s vigour is concentrated underground. The flavour is surprisingly delicate - it looks and tastes like skinny parsnip. To prepare as a coffee-substitute, scrape, dice and roast in a low oven till perfectly dry and well-browned. To prepare as a root-vegetable, bake in foil with butter and pepper.

Bittercress. The leaf-rosettes of Cardamine hirsute (or hairy bittercress for the soft fur on the upper leaves)  are no bigger than a coffee-saucer and flourish wherever they find a toe-hold. They flourish all year round, providing food for free when the salad-bed is bare.   A miniature member of the mustard family, its leaves, flowers and seedpods are all edible. The plant grows prolifically, preferring cracks in pavements and storm-drains to anything tidy in the vegetable-bed. Gather the leaf-rosette and tiny blossoms before the flower-stalk shoots - once cropped, the plant renews itself with remarkable rapidity, shooting seeds in all directions at the slightest disturbance. The little blossoms are usually white, though can vary from cream to pinkish to yellow, depending on the composition of the soil.  To prepare as a salad-green, discard the root, rinse the leaf-rosette carefully (it’s sandy stuff), chop like parsley, and use as you would watercress. It’s packs a surpringly peppery punch - good in a leek and potato soup, or folded into whipped cream as a sauce for smoked fish, and just the thing in watercress sandwiches (Downton Abbey at teatime, anyone?). 

p.s. Beloved paid subscribers (don’t I just love you?) will shortly be in receipt of my favourite spring foragings. Meanwhile, check out my website for fruit and veg prints (plus fungi and fish) - order at https://www.elisabethluard.org/shop-1