Nettle soup

Ingredients 1 leek, 1/2 pint vegetable stock, 1 potato, 200g nettles, butter

Serves: 2 Preparation: 20 minutes

When I first started making nettle soup, it took me literally 10 minutes of blanching and blending nettles with vegetable stock before I was eating my lovely fresh bowl of soup. These days I like more depth of flavour and a thicker texture which only adding leek and potato brings to the table. 20 minutes for soup is still great in my opinion, and nettles are freely available so this is certainly easy on the pocket.

1) Dice the leek and sautee until soft in a knob of butter.

2) Peel and dice the potato and add to the leek. Stir through and then add the vegetable stock.

3) To prepare the nettles, pick them carefully by cutting through the lowest part of the stem with secateurs or good scissors, then pick them up by the stems and pop them in your foraging bag/basket. Pour into a colander and run under cold water until any bugs have been washed away. You can use rubber gloves to protect your hands when picking the leaves from the stems but years of cooking burns have given me asbestos fingers and a few stings in you really don't much notice the tingle any more.

4) Once the potatoes are soft (about 15 minutes) add the nettles to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and pulse in the blender before serving.