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Dale
 
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Well, I've tried the recipe now and everyone agreed that it was the
worst thing I've ever cooked. Briefly the idea is to make a kind of
porridge with 2 pounds of fresh stinging nettle in 4 quarts of water,
thickened with flour and ground walnuts. It's served in a dish with a
fried egg on top.

Instead of 2 pounds fresh nettle I used 200 grams of dried. Even though
it was dried, I was surprised at how fresh it looked and smelled. I
think it was only partially dried and sold semi-fresh. On the other
hand, it had a lot of stem pieces in it, that made for unpleasant
eating experience. But the main problem was that it had an extremely
strong flavor.

My girl friend, who is Bulgarian, says that it definitely was not like
what her mother and grandmother made for her when she was a girl (about
50 years ago). Maybe I should try again someday with fresh nettles, but
at the moment I'd just like to get the taste out of my mouth.

If anyone is interested in repeating my experiment, I'd be interested
to hear about it. I'll try making a couple of suggestions:

1. Maybe try mixing the nettle with spinach to reduce its flavor.

2. Dried nettle is probably not the way to go. Part of the problem, I
think, is that the nettle I had was intended for making tea. So the
stem pieces were not considered to be a problem.

3. Think small. 2 pounds of nettle is way too much for an experiment.
The 200 grams of dried nettle that I used exploded into a huge pot,
which I guess I will have to dispose of.

Dale