Veggie's Delight: Creamy Nettles with Wild Garlic, Saffron & Mustard Seeds

My mother recently gave me a tray of boiled frozen nettles and, since I have never cooked nettles before (though I lived on this minty plant in spring as a child), I decided to give it a shot. Romanian-style nettle recipes include flour and/or oil, so going traditional was not an option. Some weeks ago I found an appetizing recipe by Nigel Slater in The Guardian, and because it had been on my mind ever since, it was now a good excuse to try his version.

Creamy Nettles with Ramson, Saffron, Mustard Seeds and Parmesan

adapted from Nigel Slater, The Guardian

In Romania you know spring has arrived when the farmers' market is abundant in the first produce of the year: radishes, spinach, ramson, nettles. It is nature's way to tell us that winter is over.

Type of cuisine: European/Vegetarian, low fat

Cooking time: less than 15 minutes

Difficulty: very easy :)

400 gr of nettles

2 bunches of fresh ramson leaves (approx 100 leaves)

3 tsp crushed mustard seeds

1 tsp freshly crushed coriander seeds

1 small diced tomato (or 2 tbs of diced canned tomatoes)

1/2 glass of single cream (low-fat, 15%)

saffron

.........................

ciabatta (toasted in the oven)

parmesan

extra mustard seeds for decoration

sumac 

Method

Boil the nettles in salty water. Chop the ramson leaves finely. Dice the tomato. 

Heat some extra virgin olive oil in the wok and fry the coriander (1 spoon) & mustard seeds (2 spoons) till they pop. Cover - unless you want to spend the rest of the evening rubbing & polishing the cooker shiny! Add the ramson leaves and let them simmer until they reduce. Add the nettles and tomato and toss. 

In a separate bowl, pour the single cream (I always use light, low-fat cream) and mix with the saffron and the remaining tsp of mustard seeds. The cream will turn yellow. 

Pour the cream over the nettles and cook over a low flame for 5 minutes. 

In the meantime, toast some ciabatta in the oven. Serve the nettle & ramson stew on the toasted bread. Grate some parmesan - you could broil it as well.  I didn't, because I didn't have the patience :) Decorate the plate with parmesan, sumac and extra mustard seeds. 

The refined taste & crunchy texture of the ciabatta were blending to perfection.  What a great combination! I couldn't get enough of it. It was a delicious vegetarian meal that I loved to the last bite. 

In lieu of conclusion

Because ramson is also known as wild garlic, I did without proper garlic and I also skipped the salt (it proved to be a naturally salty dish). If you use full-fat cream (30% fat or more), you can mix it with warm water to thin it a little.

Nettles on toasted ciabatta & grated parmesan 

Sumac, mustard seeds & parmesan

Hot Chocolate, Sweet Bread & Some Soul Searching

No, I will not write down the recipe of how to make hot chocolate! :)


I know I will sound a bit mushy, but even a cuppa chocolate can bring you down memory lane. 


You may remember the famous madeleine quotation by Marcel Proust from A la recherche du temps perdu:  "I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." [...]


"And suddenly the memory revealed itself."


"The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...." but "....as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me .... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents."


It's funny how many times a whiff of perfume perforating the air, the flavour of a dish or a tantalizing sip we take send us to a different world we once were in and thus, makes our return simply magical.


Same as in Proust's story, my mother had given me this big sweet bread named cozonac in Romanian. It's made with white flour, yeast, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, saffron, lemon or orange rind and zest, and stuffed with chocolate, walnuts, Turkish Delight or raisins soaked in rum overnight.


I have never attempted such a difficult task, but I enjoy having a slice a day, relishing every bite and going back to the hot kitchen, seeing my mother kneading the sweet aromatic dough and there I am, stealing a tiny, gluey tidbit... How many times hasn't my mother found me with the finger in the pie, literally speaking? Guilty pleasures are made of these short instances that shape our life as adults: the love we were loved with, the tenderness with which we were often reprimanded.

Sweet bread with raisins, Turkish Delight and stuffed with rich, dark chocolate. Vintage serving tray.

Coming out of the stream of consciousness, I must say I crushed some fresh leaves of mint in the mortar and pestle till they oozed their green sap, mixed them with Dutch dark cocoa, brown sugar and scalding hot milk. 


A surprising combination: something old (the sweet bread) and something new (the hot chocolate), something hot (the milk) and something fresh (the mint).


What a trip!


And I will end with the excerpt from Du côté de chez Swann in French because, as Shakspeare rightly acknowledged, "translators [are] traitors", aren't they?


"(Ma mère) envoya chercher un de ces gâteaux courts et dodus appelés Petites Madeleines qui semblent avoir été moulés dans la valve rainurée d'une coquille de Saint-Jacques. Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d'un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j'avais laissé s'amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l'instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d'extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m'avait envahi (...)"

"Et tout d'un coup, le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût, c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (...) ma tante Léonie m'offrait après l'avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul." 

"Quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sous leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir."

Marcel Proust in Combray in Du côté de chez Swann in A la recherche du temps perdu (1913) (source http://du-sacre-au-sucre.blogspot.com)