Young and tender greens

These are the last few weeks to bag yourself a meal of nettle tops. Now we are fully in May the patch of nettles out back is looking like its ready to flower and seed. This is not good for us hungry vegans as when nettles start to flower they produce tiny grains in their leaves that if eaten can irritate the urinary tract. So the key thing is to get them whilst they are green and bright.Grab yourself a good couple of handfuls of dandelion leaves to throw in with them, do you know you can eat all parts of a dandelion! Now this is what I do with them:-

1 Rinse all your leaves under cold water, take care handling your nettles.

2 You want a good carrier bag of nettles and two handfuls of dandelion leaves chopped finely.

3 Heat a heavy bases frying pan with a bit of oil and toss in your prepared leaves.

4 Now if you have some, or can borrow some a bit of nutmeg does wonders. If you can also scrape together an onion this gives it a good texture or in your trip picking leaves you could follow the trail of wild garlic by its smell and throw in some leaves and flowers into your bag for this.

5 Toss in some seasoning, I shall blog later about making seaweed salt, this is great here especially with some black pepper.

Redress with some herb oil, olive oil or anything you can get your hands on and either eat as a lovely green snack or serve on toast.

This also makes a great layer to homemade vegan pizza , put your tomatoes on first then nettles and dandelions next, topped of with any of your favourites.

Now wheres my fork....