cookrookery

“It was a brave man,” said Jonathan Swift, “who first ate an oyster.” There are other culinary conundrums that come to mind when it comes to food which is disgusting or downright lethal without proper preparation, such as:

How did we know wheat would be good to eat if we dried it, husked it, ground it, mixed it with water and baked it? Otherwise it’s just grass.

Fugu (pufferfish) is a delicacy but if improperly prepared is lethal. How many test subjects did chefs go through to find out how to properly prepare it?

Cassava or manioc is a major food staple in much of the world, but before eating it must be dried, ground into flour, soaked for 24 hours, dried again, then toasted, otherwise you may as well just swallow a cyanide capsule. Who found this out?

Who first looked at a Twinkie and said, “you know, I bet I could deep fry that?”

Why did anyone ever eat a nettle?

The theme of this post is glorious, glorious spring. Spring is here! Green things are erupting from the earth and Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” is running through my head. The farmer’s market is open, and big bags of new nettles are for sale for the only time in the year.

Nettles have been a food since at least the bronze age. We know this because in 2011 in the Cambridgeshire fens an archaeological dig uncovered a bunch of canoes, swords and baskets dating from 1000BC, perfectly preserved by the peat. Inside one of the canoes was a bowl with the spoon still in it, and inside the bowl was nettle soup. (One does have to wonder, however, what happened to the people who suddenly ran away from their canoes, swords and baskets and half-eaten lunch, leaving them behind long enough to be buried with layers of peat. History is weird sometimes.)

In Sweden, nettles are eaten to celebrate spring’s arrival, in a soup with minimum extra ingredients to emphasize the sheer popping spring-ness of the nettles. Traditionally, the nettles are boiled to remove the sting, chopped up with other weeds such as chervil and fennel, and returned to the boiling water with onions and salt. This is eaten with eggs. Note that this recipe includes nothing which wasn’t commonly available in the bronze age in Europe: weeds, onions, salt water, and eggs. It’s also very good, but I have taken the liberty of including pepper which wasn’t available in the bronze age unless you happened to be in Asia, and omitting the eggs, because I had eggs for breakfast.

Nettle Soup for Spring

1 bag fresh nettles

Enough salty water to boil the nettles and no more

½ onion

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon flour

A few sprigs parsley

freshly ground pepper

First of all, you must cope with the terror that is nettles. If you go out picking them, wear gloves. If you are a coward like me and buy them in a bag at the Farmer’s Market, carry them home gingerly at arm’s length making sure not a single leaf brushes near any part of the flimsy plastic wall separating your hand from the Weed That Bites. Put them down on the counter and watch for a while to make sure they don’t make any sudden moves, then bring some water to boil.

They are watching me.

How much water? Well, the point of this dish is to taste the nettles, so no more water than you will need to make the eventual soup. For me, this was about 6 cups in a large stock pot for a plastic bag full of nettles. If you use more, you will end up throwing away water, which means throwing away flavor. So use just enough to blanch them and make the stock afterwards. The nettles will shrink when boiling, like spinach.

When the water is at a killing boil, throw in the nettles stems and all (using tongs or upending the bag) and laugh maniacally as the stinging hairs loaded with acetylocholine, histamine and formic acid are neutralized, rendering the leaves helpless to your devilish plans. Let them boil for three minutes. Envision your throat swelling closed after you sample your first spoonful of soup and let them boil a couple of minutes more. When you are feeling brave, drain the nettles (preserving the cooking liquid) and shock the leaves in ice water. This is called blanching and it preserves the color, which is at least half the reason to cook with such a malevolent ingredient.

You will see in the picture that the water the nettles have been cooked in (left) appears deep brown. It is not. It is in fact, as you will see if you let some dribble from a ladle, lovely deep green. Green so deep the green-receptors in your eyes fail and you can only perceive brown. Or something. And the smell! Here is the scent of spring! A combination of newly mown grass, fresh horse dung (you know you like it, admit it), open fields, hedgerows, soft rain falling on rustic church steeples in Scandinavian villages, etc. You only have to smell it to know spring has truly arrived and the green things are returning. (Before you use this water for stock, however, pour it off slowly into another container, leaving the grit in the first. Nothing ruins a good refined soup like the crunch of grit between the teeth.)

Squeeze out water from the nettles (no gloves required, just your hands. Come on. Do it.) and chop them to prevent long stringy fibers clotting your soup. Chop up some parsley too, while you are at it – this is a herb soup, so you can add chervil or chives or anything green. Just don’t overdo it – it’s all about the nettles.

Heat up a lump of butter. Chop up half an onion and two cloves garlic. Sautee the onion and garlic until they are soft but not browning. Throw in the nettles and sprinkle with a tablespoon of flour. Stir well and add a few ladles of your nettle stock, until you reach a nice runny consistency.

Blend it as smooth as you like – I think the smoother, the better. Reheat it with a splash of milk. Sprinkle it with pepper, eat it, and be grateful. Spring.

I regret that Peking changed its name to Beijing. My life is full of regrets. The most recent one is betting a bottle of Fernet Branca on the outcome of this year’s NCAA tourney. (My overconfidence has never recovered from the occasion, a couple of years back, when I correctly guessed the finalists, the winner, and the exact point spread. Gambling and winning can be just as detrimental as gambling and losing.) “Beijing Duck” just doesn’t have the same romantic ring.

Peking duck is one of China’s national foods. It is so good it was responsible for re-establishing relations between the United States and China in the 1970s when Kissinger insisted Nixon had to travel to China to taste it. It’s an interesting preparation, combining very few simple ingredients and an amazingly elaborate method. In a nutshell, here is the process:

1) Inflate the skin of the duck with a bamboo tube or bicycle pump to separate the skin from the fat.

2) Hang up the duck and scald it all over with boiling water to close the pores.

3) Let the duck dry in a warm drafty place for a few hours.

4) Make a marinade of honey, soy sauce, lemon and Shaoxing wine, and repeatedly baste the duck while it dries for up to several days.

5) Slow-roast the duck hanging upright in a tall oven over a fire of Gaolin wood.

Eating it can be just as elaborate, with the entire meal being based around different stages of the duck. First the skin is eaten dipped in garlic sauce, then the meat is stir fried or served in thin pancakes with green onions and plum sauce, and then a broth of the bones and fat finishes the meal. I love duck for this reason: one duck feeds Leslie and I for days.

I attempted Peking Duck for the first time last weekend, and boy was it fun to hang up a duck and scald it with water and then dry it for hours in front of an electric fan while basting it. I always believe food should be both entertainment and nutrition. If you want to try it yourself, Andrea Nguyen has an excellent breakdown on her website Viet World Kitchen, and while I was a little less dedicated, I followed much the same process. Since neither Andrea or I have a tall brick wood fired oven, we both just roasted our duck on a roasting rack over a roasting pan to catch the drippings (absolutely essential when it comes to a fatty bird like duck).

Then we ate some of the duck with Chinese pancakes, green onions and plum sauce as described above. This is by far and away our favourite way to eat duck, no matter how it is cooked. I took photos, but they sucked, so I’m not going to put you off by showing them.

The days that followed contained many joyful variations on duck, such as:

Duck stir fry!

Duck stock!

…Which was used in duck risotto with roasted hearts of romaine!

Chinese duck salad with Filipino lumpia!

Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-Fourth and a Half Century!

The Chinese duck salad was a new one on us, and really a hit. The recipe is from Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, in his book “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines.”

Chinese Duck Salad

1/2 lb cooked boneless duck meat

3/4 lb bean sprouts

1/4 cup chopped fresh coriander

DRESSING:

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

2 tb light soy sauce

2 tb sesame oil (it seems like a lot, but it isn’t)

1/2 tsp sugar

freshly ground black pepper

torn lettuce for base

Place the salad ingredients in a bowl. Mix the dressing separately and toss with the salad. Serve over shredded lettuce.