Recipes

NETTLE and PEA SOUP
Broad Bean Paste
Runner Bean Chutney

Recipe of the Month

Thank you Rose for sending this in and also thanks to Tony Gibbons of The Friendly Food Club 01308 868700.

Note from ed - obviously you need to find the nettles somewhere other than on the allotments! But the peas would be the ones you grow.

NETTLE and PEA SOUP

To make enough for 4 you will need:

About 150 g Young nettle tips washed carefully.
1 Medium floury potato
A bunch of Spring onions
200 g Frozen or Fresh peas
Clove of Garlic
1 litre of, preferably, home-made chicken or vegetable stock

METHOD

Fry the onions and garlic in a little butter until floppy.
Add potato chopped into small slices and cook gently until soft.
Add the nettle tips and cook for a few minutes until they have wilted.
Add the stock and peas and simmer for 15 minutes or so.
Whiz it up in a blender and add salt if necessary but definitely fresh ground pepper.
Add a small amount of single cream.

Can be frozen but loses some of the gorgeous pea colour.

Broad Bean Paste

Put some broad beans in a liquidizer and liquidize them. Add a bit of mint, or any other sort of herb. Add some wholemeal bread and mix it all up.

You should then have some broad bean paste.

You spread it over some meat that you are going to grill or roast and it is lovely.

There you go - thanks Silvia!

Runner Bean Chutney

This recipe is one of Melvyn's favourites.
(Note from the editor - I like the mixture of metric and imperial measurements!)

This recipe makes 6lb of delicious chutney.

Ingredients

2lb of runner beans
5 large onions
1.5lb of demerara sugar
1.75 pints of malt vinegar
1.5 table spoons of cornflower
1.5 table spoons of mustard
1.5 spoons of turmeric

Method

Boil the runner beans and the onions in salted water
Drain and chop up
Add 1.5 pints of malt vinegar, along with the demerara sugar
Boil for 15 minutes
Mix the mustard, tumeric and the cornflower with the remaining 0.25 pints of malt vinegar
Add to the boiling mixture
Boil for a further 15 minutes
Cool, bottle and enjoy

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