Light & Seasonal
Serves 3-4
A deceptively hearty soup, this dish combines two cheap and abundant ingredients: nettles and low-grade industrial cider.
Field dweller Hugh Fearnley Whittingtingtingstall has a tasty, somewhat more traditional version of the recipe, but it really is more of a cream-of-nettle soup, whereas this cheeky number is a purée, so it is thickened with the starches occurring naturally (or in the case of the White Lightning, very unnaturally), in the ingredients.
This is a dish designed to use ingredients available from the mini supermarket adjoining petrol stations. Hopefully your local Spa, Budgens or Tesco Metro will have a small (probably minute) fruit and vegetable selection, and if you are truly blessed, the haute-cuisine of Costcutter, a Bake & Bite [sic] stand.
Picking the nettles themselves can be made into a fun after-pub activity, much like a more painful, drunk and altogether better version of picking Elderflower with mummy on a golden June evening. When picking, try to harvest only good-looking leaves and green tips of the plant. Generally, the younger the leaf the better.
Nettles are rich in vitamins C, D and Iron, very much like spinach which is incidentally very similar in flavour.
Don’t worry about stinging your mouth, by the way. Cooking the plant neutralises the histamine and carbolic acids in the leaves which causes the rashes.
Ingredients
3 large Onions
4 medium sized Carrots
3 medium sized Potatoes (any variety will do, and can be substituted for Sweet Potatoes it you’re feeling decadent)
2 sticks of Celery
250g of Stinging Nettles (see above)
2 Liter White Lightning cider* (please note, only 500ml of this is needed for cooking, the excess is at your disposal...)
500 ml of vegetable stock
A handful of fresh sage
50g butter
Salt & pepper
Method
Roughly dice the Onions, Potato, Celery and Carrots. Place the butter in a large saucepan and sauté the diced vegetables.
When the contents of the pan is a little softened up, tear up the sage leaves and throw them in with no remorse.
Pour in the cider and stock and stew until the liquid has reduced by about half. Whilst waiting for the liquid to boil down, it is sometimes nice to intensely smell the fumes coming from the mixture.
Add the nettles and season with salt and pepper to preference. Stir everything together and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
After leaving to simmer, pour the mixture into a food processor and blitz until it, well, looks like soup.
Return the soup to the pan and heat it up before serving whilst adding further seasoning to taste.
Serve with bread from the Bake & Bite counter.
*This may be substituted for any other cider, obviously. Try strong vintage ciders for more of a kick.