Braendenaeldesuppe

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy-bottomed pot, 3 to 4 litre
• •Stick blender or upright blender
• •Large pan for blanching
• •Slotted spoon
• •Kitchen gloves for picking nettles
• •Large bowl for the ice bath

Instructions

1. 1

   Boil the eggs

   Put the eggs into a small pan, cover with cold water, and bring to the boil. The moment the water reaches a rolling boil, set a timer for eight minutes. Eight minutes gives you a fully set white and a yolk that is cooked through but still bright yellow and soft at the center, not the chalky grey of an overcooked egg. Drain and plunge straight into cold water. The cold stops the cooking and loosens the shell from the white, which matters because the eggs are the thing you see first in the bowl.

   Eggs that are a few days old peel more cleanly than very fresh ones. If yours are fresh from the farm, boil them the day before.
2. 2

   Prepare the nettles

   Wearing kitchen gloves, pick the top four or five leaves from each nettle stem and discard the thicker stems below. You want young growth only. Older leaves go stringy and bitter and carry a harsher taste. Two hundred grams of leaves looks like a surprising amount when you carry it home, and cooks down to almost nothing. Wash the leaves in a large bowl of cold water, lifting them out rather than pouring through a colander so any grit stays behind.

   Forage away from roadsides, dog paths, and sprayed fields. The edge of a hedge in a quiet meadow is what you're looking for.
3. 3

   Blanch the nettles

   Bring a large pan of salted water to a rolling boil and have a bowl of ice water ready next to the stove. Drop the nettles in and push them under with a slotted spoon. Thirty seconds is all they need. The sting comes from formic acid in the tiny hairs on the leaf, and the heat destroys it instantly. The moment the leaves go dark and limp, lift them straight into the ice water. This sets the bright green color and stops the cooking. Drain well and squeeze out as much water as you can between your hands. You can take your gloves off now. The nettles are harmless.

4. 4

   Sweat the aromatics

   Melt the butter in a heavy pot over a gentle heat. Add the sliced shallots and leek and a good pinch of salt. Stir them through the butter, put the lid on, and let them sweat for about eight minutes until completely soft and translucent. You don't want any color. Browning pulls the whole soup toward caramel and away from green, and green is the entire point of this bowl.

5. 5

   Simmer the potatoes

   Add the chopped potatoes and the stock to the pot. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook uncovered for about fifteen minutes, until the potatoes collapse when you press them against the side of the pot with the back of a spoon. Floury potatoes give the soup its body without any flour or thickener. If there is any resistance left in the potato, wait another few minutes. Undercooked potato makes a grainy soup.

6. 6

   Blend with the nettles

   Take the pot off the heat. This matters. Add the squeezed blanched nettles and blend the soup until completely smooth. The color should be deep, almost startling green. If you blend while the soup is still over direct heat, the nettles turn khaki within a minute and you lose that first-day-of-spring color that makes this soup what it is. Off the heat, they stay vivid.

7. 7

   Finish with cream

   Stir in the cream and return the pot to a low heat. Warm it through until just below a simmer, never boiling. Boiling cream breaks and the soup goes grainy. Season generously with salt, white pepper, and the smallest grating of nutmeg. Taste, and taste again. The soup should be rounded and green, with the cream softening the wild edge of the nettles without covering it. Only by tasting do you really understand it.

   White pepper, not black. Black pepper leaves dark specks on the green surface and changes the flavor toward something sharper than this soup wants.
8. 8

   Serve with the eggs

   Peel the eggs and halve them lengthwise with a sharp knife wiped between cuts so the yolks stay clean. Ladle the soup into warm shallow bowls. Lay two egg halves, yolk side up, on the surface of each bowl so they float in the green. Scatter with snipped chives. Serve at once, with rugbrod and good butter on the side. The eggs are not decoration. They are the cold against the hot, the pale yolk against the green, the piece that makes this a proper bowl and not just a puree. Tak for mad.

Chef Tips

• •Forage only from clean ground. Stay away from roadsides, dog paths, and sprayed field edges. A quiet meadow or the back of a garden is where the good nettles are, and they want picking before they flower. Once the plants flower, the leaves turn gritty and the season is over for the year.
• •If you cannot forage nettles, the honest substitute is a mix of baby spinach and watercress in equal parts. It will not taste the same, nettles have a mineral wildness nothing else matches, but it keeps the color and the spirit of the dish. Don't use frozen spinach. It brings too much water and the soup goes thin.
• •Blanched nettles freeze beautifully. If you find more than you need on a good foraging walk, blanch the lot, squeeze hard, and freeze in small portions. You can make this soup in June from March nettles and nobody will know.

Advance Preparation

• •The eggs can be boiled a day ahead and kept in their shells in the fridge. Peel and halve them just before serving so the yolks stay bright.
• •Nettles can be foraged, blanched, and squeezed up to two days ahead. Store the green balls wrapped in a cloth in the fridge, or freeze for longer keeping.
• •The soup base (without the cream) can be made a few hours ahead and gently reheated. Add the cream just before serving so it doesn't split.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 500g)