Recipies: Leaves
Watercress Soup
'Melt a large lump of butter in a saucepan and add chopped spring onions or
shallots, garlic, root ginger (optional) and stir over a low heat for a few
minutes. Add watercress, raise the heat and cook until the watercress has
softened. Add salt and pepper, some marjoram and chicken stock. Bring to the
boil, then liquidise. Reheat and serve.' Suki Kinloch.
Easter Ledger Pudding
Pick young bistort leaves, dandelion, lady's mantle, or nettle and submerge
in boiling water for 20 minutes. Strain and chop. To the mixture add a little
boiled barley, a chopped hard-boiled egg, butter, pepper and salt and heat
in a saucepan. Press into a pudding basin to shape. Serve with veal and bacon.
Scotch Nettle Pudding
To 4.5l (l gal) young nettle tops, thoroughly washed, add 2 good-sized leeks
or onions, two heads of broccoli or a small cabbage, and 100g (¼lb) rice.
Clean the vegetables well, chop the broccoli and leeks and mix with the nettles.
Place all together in a muslin bag in alternate layers with the rice, and
tie tightly. Boil in salted water long enough to cook the vegetables, the
time varying according to the tenderness or otherwise of the greens. Serve
with gravy or melted butter. Wild Vegetables and Salads, Mrs M. Grieve.
Nettle Soup
Sweat 1 large diced potato and a chopped onion in butter until the onion is
transparent. Add 2 good handfuls of nettles and 550ml (1 pt) stock. Simmer
for 20 minutes. Put through a vegetable mill or blender. Add 275ml (½pt)
milk, adjust seasoning, reheat and serve.
Nettle as a vegetable
Put some washed nettle tops in a pan of boiling salted water. Cook for 15
minutes, drain, add salt, pepper and butter and chop all together over a low
heat. Serve.
Mallow Soup
Take 450g (1 lb) leaves and, discarding the stalks, chop them and boil in
about 1.1l (2pt) stock for 10 minutes. Make a sauce by gently frying 2 crushed
cloves of garlic in some oil and adding 1 dessertspoon of ground coriander,
salt and pepper. Add the stock and simmer the whole mixture for a few minutes,
stirring occasionally. Serve the soup by itself or add meat and vegetables.
Green Sorrel Sauce (to accompany cold meat)
Take a handful of sorrel leaves. Strip off any tough stalks, sprinkle with
sugar and chop finely. Put in a jug and pour over 1 tablespoon boiling water,
stir, then add enough vinegar to dilute.
Sorrel Puree
Remove any tough stalks from a couple of handfuls of sorrel leaves. Melt a
knob of butter in a pan and add the sorrel leaves, stir until they have dissolved
in a mush. Add 1 teaspoon flour and then some cream. Heat until it boils and
stir into a puree.
Sorrel Soup
To the puree made as above add 825m1 (1½pt) stock or half stock and half
milk. Reheat, stirring all the time, and serve hot.
