WANTED: Recipes

[Sarah Thorne]

Cooking, baking, vegetarian, vegan, raw, organic, local, seasonal, fair trade, home grown, experimental, haute cuisine and above all DELICIOUS! 

What's your favourite recipe?

All suggestions welcome :-) 

[Sarah Thorne]

Its spring and they are everywhere, so lets use them: Five ways with (delicious) stinging nettles!

• Instead of spinach

Gather a  big colander of nettle tops. Sweat with a little butter, pepper and nutmeg. Or cook with garlic, leeks, butter and cream. Simple, and just as good as spinach.

• Nettle omelette

Blanch and roughly chop up the nettle tops. Finely chop some wild garlic leaves if you have some. Grate a small amount of parmesan cheese.

Briefly whip some free-range eggs, make an omelette in the usual way. Then while the omelette’s centre is still cooking away, fold in the nettles, garlic leaves and cheese.

• Nettle soup

Roughly chop two onions, fry them gently in olive oil in a large saucepan. Add a clove of crushed garlic, a couple of spuds (diced) and a litre of water. You could use a veg or chicken stock for extra richness, but plain water will do.

Boil slowly until the potatoes are soft, add a generous bowl of nettle leaves, boil for another 10 minutes.

Add a glug of cream or milk, then blitz in a liquidiser to the smoothness you prefer – perhaps with a bit of raw parsley to give a vivid green colour. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Nettles work really well in soups. Or try adding some blanched and chopped nettle towards the end of a stew or fish chowder.

• Mozarella an nettle pizza

Roll your dough out and place in a floured baking tray. Brush the garlic infused olive oil onto the dough. Sprinkle the mozzarella on the pizza and then place the nettles tops on the mozzarella. Finish it off with some ricotta, salt and pepper and back for around 10 mins.

• Stinging nettle juice

Collect a good few handfulls of fresh nettles and put them in the blender with some water. Filter the juice through a cloth or sieve and cool in the fridge before drinking. Add some lemons for taste. You can also mix the left over pulp into a soup or guacamole. 

Remember to only pick the tops of the nettles and be careful not to sting yourself!

Enjoy :-)

[Julia Nussholz]

Thank you for sharing this great idea, Sarah! Mozarella and nettle pizza sounds so delicious!

This is a very tasty and climate-friendly recipe that I would like to share:

Aspargus (right now vegetable of the season!) with Sesam, Coconut and Tofu:

(see http://www.eaternity.ch/lifestyle/rezepte/spargel-nudeln-an-sesam-k... the German version)

According to the authors the meal equals 342 gr CO² per person what makes it much more climate friendly than the traditional aspargus recipe with sauce hollandaise and escalope equal to approximately 1.53 Kilo CO2 per person.

Ingredient:

600 gr. Pasta
500 gr. White Aspargus
200 gr. Carrots
100 gr. Leek
2 Garlic Cloves
1 Onion
15 gr. fresh Ginger
1 TL Cayenne Pepper
½ TL Kurkuma
10 gr. Sesame seeds
500 dl Coconut milk
1 EL Lemon juice
200 gr. Tofu
2 EL Rapeseed oil
1 EL Soja sauce
1 EL Sesame oil
1 EL Cornflower
10 dl White vine
Salt and pepper

Preperation:

Fry sesame seeds and put them aside. Chop tofu and fry it in oil while adding some salt. Add lemon juice and fry tofu in it until lemon juice is vaporised. Than, put tofu aside and mix it with the sesame seeds. Prepare the pasta as indicated on the package and peel the aspargus. Afterwards, cook aspargus together with the pasta in salty water for 10 min. (be aware of different cooking times)

Chop carrots, leek and onions. Fry onions gentle until glazed and add carrots and onions. Afterwards, add the chopped garlic cloves and ginger and fry together with the vegetables for two minutes. Add red pepper and kurkuma and continue frying for together for a minute. Add carrots and leek and fry for five more minutes. Add the coconut milk to the vegetable mix and simmer it for a short while. You might season it with some soja sause, sesame oil, white vine, pepper or salt. To thicken the sauce, add a bit corn flower.

Finally, serve the pasta together with the aspargus on a plate. Pour the coco-vegetable mix on it and top with the tofu cubes!

Bon Appetit!

[Julia Nussholz]

And this is another interesting webtool that I would like to share with you:

http://rechner.eaternity.ch/

It is a calculator to estimate the CO² emmission of food products and to track the emissions that our meals cause. Although, the climate impact of edibles depends on many factors such as the season, production means etc. and is therefore difficult to calculate, this calculator still gives a quite accurate impression on the climate impact of food products and is at least very helpful to compare different products.

[Sarah Thorne]

Hi Julia, thanks for the great link. Its so important to get an idea of the CO² emissions f food products, and unlike the origin or ingredients, there is no indication on the products themselves. So this is really useful :-)

Julia Nussholz said:

And this is another interesting webtool that I would like to share with you:

http://rechner.eaternity.ch/

It is a calculator to estimate the CO² emmission of food products and to track the emissions that our meals cause. Although, the climate impact of edibles depends on many factors such as the season, production means etc. and is therefore difficult to calculate, this calculator still gives a quite accurate impression on the climate impact of food products and is at least very helpful to compare different products.