Nettle Ravioli
Life’s taken a turn for the wholesome recently. As well as indoor gardening and a lengthy discussion on Zoom about knitting websites for beginners, another hobby on my lockdown bucket-list is foraging.
I did a course last March with Totally Wild UK that I can’t recommend enough. Take note: without an expert guide a foraging experience can quickly boil down to a group of hipsters in wellies scrabbling around in the bushes. Luckily this wasn’t my experience. Our guide Chris had everything you could ask for, great knowledge, lots of tasters and some foraging horror stories thrown in for good measure.
He also threw in some tricks like how to pick nettles with your bare hands. The danger! Someone, grab a Dock Leaf! It turns out there’s a knack to it involving a combination of speed and knowing which direction the spikes go. Also if you do get stung, dock leaves sadly do nothing, use the juice from the stem instead. Aside from the spectacle, what we learned from this demo is that nettles are great to cook with and packed with more iron than spinach. And so, during a time like this when a 150g pack of fresh spinach has become somewhat of a black market luxury I thought what better time than to head on out to Hackney Marshes and forage myself some nettles to add to tonights dinner.
I decided to leave the danger foraging to the professionals and instead wrapped my hand with a bag for life to collect the nettles as I don’t have gardening gloves. This works perfectly fine so go out and give it a try. The other important tip is to just collect the new growth from the top of the plant which has the best flavour and avoid anything growing close to a path or below knee height or you might be serving up your nettles with a side order of poop de chienne.
Ingredients:
150g nettles
250g cottage cheese (with liquid drained out through a muslin cloth) or ricotta
2 cloves garlic
1/2 white onion
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp olive oil.
2 tsp butter + 3 extra for the sauce
Sage leaves for the sauce
Salt and Pepper
Serve with sage butter sauce or chicken consommé
Method:
With gloves on, remove the nettle leaves from their stalks and add them to a colander. Put the colander under cold running water and rinse the leaves thoroughly. Tip the leaves into a pan of boiling water with a large pinch of salt. Cook for three to four minutes to break the stings so that the nettles are safe to eat. Now tip the nettles back into the colander to get rid of the water. Press out as much water as possible from the leaves, squeeze them with your hands or through a cheesecloth to make them extra dry.
Put a frying pan on medium heat with a drizzle of olive oil and butter. Whilst this is heating, dice the onion, crush and chop the garlic and roughly chop the nettles. Add the onion to the pan, cook until they’re translucent but not coloured and then add the nettles, garlic and seasoning.
3. While that’s cooking, if you’re using cottage cheese, place your cheesecloth or muslin over a shallow bowl. Tip your cheese out onto the muslin, gather the cloth around it and squeeze as much liquid out as possible. When you’re done, discard the liquid. If you’re using ricotta this step isn’t necessary.
4. Add the cheese to the pan along with the nutmeg. Mix and leave to cook together for five minutes then transfer the mix into the bowl and leave to one side to cool.
For this next part you’ll need fresh pasta. Take a look at my simple, two ingredient recipe here.
Roll out your fresh pasta into sheets. The thickness should be the 6th or 7th setting on a standard pasta machine
Make evenly spaced marks along one pasta sheet with a cookie cutter to help guide where you’ll put the filling. Leave at least a centimetre between each mark. Add a heaped teaspoon of mix to each marked circle and dab a tiny amount of water on each on the inside of the line.
Lay another pasta sheet over the top. Allow it to loosely drop between each circle where you’ve left space. With your hands, carefully push down the top sheet of pasta, around the blob of filing beneath. Push out any air between the pasta and filling so you have a tight seal.
Now get your cookie cutter and cut out your first ravioli. Repeat these steps until you have enough ravioli for two main course portions or four starters.
Prep your sage butter and cook your pasta
Head back to your hob and add the olive oil and butter to a pan. Cook it on a medium heat so the butter begins to bubble and brown. Season your sauce and add the sage leaves. If it doesn’t look like there’s not enough remember, you can never have too much butter.
Turn the heat down on your sauce. Put a saucepan of water on a rolling boil with a small handful of salt. Yep, that says handful, pasta should be cooked in sea water. Drop the ravioli into the water. It’s helpful to do this in batches to avoid sticking or bringing the water temperature down. Cook the ravioli for two minutes, you’ll see them change to a lighter colour when they’re done. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and pour over your sage butter.
Mine are served with chicken and onion consommé in the picture above. Check back here soon for the recipe.