Wednesday 15 April 2009

Nettle Nectar and Oysters (And Be Nice to Nettles Week) 13-24 May 2009


Big Fish of the Oyster World - Richard Haward
Considers the taste of nettles with oysters

The expert conclusion is that they DO taste similar!

Excuse the delay in getting back to you with the conclusion of Oyster expert Richard Haward.
/www.richardhawardsoysters.co.uk/  Well as you can see from the photos above, Richard considered the taste and mulled over the after taste before pronouncing that indeed, the after taste of stinging nettle juice is indeed that of oysters!!
Well you can clearly see how exciting this bizarre food comparison is for me.  Next time any of you are tasting oysters and making wild and far flung flavour references, you will  be completely within your rights to drop the 'notes of nettle' in!  
Now back to business for just a moment here, between Richard, myself and Mark Thomas, we concluded that the reason for the after taste could well be the heroic portions of iron and trace minerals in both foods.

Oh how much fun  can a bunch of nettles be?  

On researching stinging nettles I came across a site called 'Be Nice To Nettles Week'  which runs from 13th - 24th May.  www.nettles.org.uk/nettles/people/food.asp

As well as it's superannuated nutritional value is also a long tradition of using them medicinally I found this quote on the above website.

"Culpeper recommended the use of nettles to ’...consume the phlegmatic superfluities in the body of man, that the coldness and moisture of winter has left behind“. He also prescribed the juice of the leaves as a treatment for gangrenes and scabies".

From now on nettles will never quite be the same again.

I hope you see this common weed/superfood in a different light.

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