Glorious Recipes: Nettle Risotto

Ciao everyone! In today’s blog post, I’m going to tell you a little about the place where I grew up – the lovely and quirky village of Broadbottom in Greater Manchester, UK.

Among the many beautiful walks available in and around Broadbottom, you’ll find an area known as Lymefield. The trail, approximately half a mile long, was formerly the site of a large textile mill.

Broad Mills were active in Broadbottom from the early 1800s, but closed down in the 1930s following a widespread decline in textile production. In the early 1980s, the local council purchased the area and began to transform it into a heritage site. If my memory serves me correctly, the trail officially opened in the early 1990s when I was around 8 years old. My strongest memories of Lymefield include:

• Riding my bike round and round in circles
• Walks with Sophie, our English Bull Terrier, who loved rolling around in the clover
• Jumping off quite a high wall opposite the stone circle and getting stung by a bee
• Finding hundreds of tiny tadpoles in the pond. They later turned into hundreds of tiny toads and embarked on a widespread invasion of Lymefield!

More recently, Lymefield has become a place for us to source ingredients for our Glorious Recipes. A couple of weeks ago we showed you how to make pesto with wild garlic, and today I’d like to bring you another foraging recipe: Nettle Risotto.

Stinging nettles are present in quite a few Italian recipes, not just risotto but also frittata and, of course, in a super-green bowl of nettle soup. As an 8-year-old in the UK, however, I had no idea about any of this and just found them…well…a bit of a nuisance. I discovered that these deceptively fuzzy, bright green leaves would make my skin red and blotchy if I touched them, and resolved to stay away so I could concentrate on whatever I was daydreaming about at the time. It wasn’t until much, much later, when Giordano’s dad came to work with us full-time, that I learned nettles are not that different to spinach, and delicious in a smooth, buttery risotto.

Nettles are good for you, too. They are known to be very nutritious, containing plenty of vitamins A, B and C, calcium, magnesium, iron and an unusually high amount of protein for a green plant.

Early spring is the best time for nettle-picking. Armed with gloves, kitchen scissors and a plastic bag, we headed to Lymefield to pick the best nettles we could find. Make sure you have a pair of strong gloves for this, as you’ll need quite a few nettles. Giordano’s dad was wearing disposable black food prep gloves and could still feel the nettles a little bit!

We probably filled around two-thirds of a standard supermarket carrier bag with nettles. We added a few wild garlic leaves too, for that extra bit of flavour in the final dish.

How To Make Nettle Risotto: A Step-by-Step Guide

To make nettle risotto for 4 people, you will need:

• 1 litre vegetable stock
• 30g butter
• 30g extra virgin olive oil
• 250g nettles
• 100g leek
• 320g risotto rice (Carnaroli is the best)
• 50g white wine
• Around 10 wild garlic leaves

First of all, give the nettles – and the handful of wild garlic leaves – a good wash in lukewarm water. Keep your gloves!

Put half of the olive oil in a saucepan. As soon as the oil is hot, add the nettles. When they start to wilt, add a couple of glasses of water. Cover the nettles and cook for around ten minutes.

While the nettles are cooking, chop the leek into thin strips.

In the saucepan, blend the nettles in the remaining water using an electric hand whisk.

Add the leek to a small pan with the remaining oil and sauté for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. As soon as the leek starts to brown, add the rice and toast it for a couple of minutes, stirring continuously.

Add the white wine. Once it evaporates completely, add the nettles too. Now the process of cooking the risotto can really begin!

Whilst stirring continuously, add in the vegetable stock a little at a time. Basically, when you see that there is very little liquid in the pan, it’s time to add more stock! This process should take around 16 minutes.

Once cooked, add the butter and some grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Leave to stand for a couple of minutes and serve!

I need to go and buy more rice now as this post has got me thinking about some of my favourite risotto dishes! Let me know how you get on and I’ll have another recipe for you very soon.

A presto!

Laura