A Green Experiment

It's been almost a week since I've done a food blip, so I decided that today was a good day to try making nettle pesto, using the nettles I bought at the farmers' market on Saturday.

The friend who encouraged me to try making this kind of pesto said she liked to just use nettles and olive oil, and add other ingredients, such as nuts or garlic, when she was ready to use the pesto. I followed her example -- and checked out a few recipes online, just to see what was out there.

Gloved and using tongs to transfer the nettles to the boiling water for their blanching, I felt a bit like a mad scientist at work! After their suggested two minutes in boiling water, I transferred the nettles to a bowl of ice water, then roughly chopped them.

I don't own a full-size food processor, just a tiny one, so it took quite a while to chop and mix the two cups of nettles that my two big bunches were reduced to at this point. I added a little salt and the requisite olive oil, then tasted the mixture. It tasted -- green.

I suspect that I'm too accustomed to traditional pesto, made from basil, garlic, olive oil, and often Parmesan cheese, to really appreciate the subtleties of nettle pesto. That said, I do like the bright green color, and think it would be lovely swirled into a bowl of soup, or spread on a black olive baguette, or dropped in dollops onto scrambled eggs or a piece of wild salmon -- so my nettle pesto won't be going to waste!