Nettle Beer - Take One!

It started a long time ago, when I was having a strange confusing week, and I was positively shocked by my horoscope in the Beijing Scene, a free paper that was available at expat frequented junctures around China's capital. All kinds of unlikely events and situations had been coming about at the time. Accidents, near misses, strange gusts of wind. That morning, a lightbulb violently exploded not 20 feet from me, in a lone retro street lamp in silhouette near where I picked up a taxi every morning to go into work. My regular taxi stopped, I got in, and I flipped back to where the horoscopes were.

Scrolling a creamy pink 20 something manicured fingernail down the page to Leo, I read what Rob Brezsny, my horoscopist, says. It began with: "Are street lamps exploding as you walk by?" My eyebrows raised in interest at that point. It was one of those instants that burns into your mind forever even if you don't realize it at the time. Snug in traffic while a pollution pink sunrise beamed past my right shoulder and then slowly panned across the faded interior of that rusty yellow LADA, driver turning north on the second ring road in Beijing on my way to the office, I read that things were going to turn out marvelously alright. And they did.



With that I introduce you to my nettle beer, which did not turn out marvelously alright this time. It was during this famous writing week in which I was supposed to go up to the mountains and turn out a masterpiece. Instead I put on rubber gloves and scrubbed out nooks and crannies with a bucket of savon noir, embarked on spider hunting expeditions, spent inordinate amounts of time squatting in the garden with my reading glasses on searching for signs of life in the dirt, donned my marching boots for long solitary walks by the river and up into the hills, and executed my grand scheme to make nettle beer. In short, anything to avoid writing.

Don't mark a recipe down in your book, my friend. Do take time to reflect on the following message: Turn that which stings into something good. A faithful reader recounted how a weed whacker is NOT the answer for nettles, because even whacked to dust they still find ways to get us. So, while they are young and still tender and flavorful, find your nettle mojo. Pinch off their tender little heads one by one with satisfaction (wear rubber gloves!), putting all of your fury into this delicate repetitive task. Do this until you have a large basket full, preferably while humming something nice in the back of your mind. Then try to make some nettle beer with them.



I followed a recipe gleaned from an English cookbook and boiled the nettles for 15 minutes, but next time I will boil them longer. The longer the nettles spend in the water, the greener the liquid becomes. In another recipient, you mix sugar and the zest and juice of the lemons with cream of tartar. Pour the nettle liquid over this sweet acidic lemon and sugar mixture.

When I pour the nettle tisane into the acidic sugary lemon mix, the green color of the liquid changes like magic to orange, I am not sure why. After stirring it up and letting it cool a little bit, mix a bowl full of this liquid with brewers yeast, then mix that into the whole. You might not try what I did - don't sprinkle a generous pinch from a cake of baker's yeast on top of your brewers yeast for good measure. When the mix is complete, it goes into a large nonreactive container, and the waiting begins for the fermenting magic to take place.



At first, I didn't think anything was happening and wondered if I should dump it. But at the end of 2 days, it began to foam at the top. The recipe states that it should be put in a warm place undisturbed to ferment, but I kept it in corner in the kitchen, which in afterthought I think stays a little bit too cool. So the fermentation didn't kick off with any gusto. At the third day, hell or high water, it was funneled into bottles. You could smell the yeast, and it actually tasted pretty good.

Three days after going into the bottles I just could not wait to see what was going to happen! We'd invited in-laws to a picnic in the mountains! They were going to partake in a sun drenched wood-fire roasted marinated quail fest under the shade of the apple tree. We had gone up early to build a roaring little hickory wood fire in our homemade fireplace in the garden, to let it burn down to glowing embers by lunchtime, and then laid out the delectable birds to roast. They had been marinating 3 days in an herb and mixed fruit vinegar marinade. In a moment of vain hostess glory, I decided that I just had to gild the lily by bringing out a bottle of my nettle beer to display and then pop open and pour around. Me and my pride.



The bottle didn't want to pop open, and I wrestled with it for some time. Everyone was looking on in curiosity, in fact they began to huddle around as if expecting something great, raising the expectation a notch. Then when it did - WHOOSH! A geyser of Beijing sunrise-orange foam shot straight up in the air and spattered down in a sticky mess over the entire table. So much for the nettle beer. There was some hesitation to laugh with me when this happened. After I mopped off my sister in law and turned my attention to what was left in the bottle, I saw that there was enough for everyone to have a taste. Not only was it not fizzy, but it had a funny tinge to it, something that recalled a distant memory of my grandmother's permanent wave solution. But you know what? I am going to give nettle beer another try.

I think the idea to use raw sugar or honey is an important element of this recipe, something I ignored. Another important step is to ensure I have the proper yeast. Third, I should pay heed to the "warm spot" fermentation technique. The brew must be quite far along in the fermentation process before it gets sealed into bottles. In fact, I think it might be worth my while to monitor it closely, if not scientifically. If bottled too early, it can build up enormous pressure - the yeast, which is capable of doing its work in anaerobic conditions, i.e. without air, converts sugar to alcohol and produces gas which will make it spray over everyone in a shower at its most benign and possibly explode a weak bottle at its most dangerous. Last but not least, and I think my horoscopist would agree, I will never, ever make nettle beer when Venus is in retrograde. Finger in the wind, eye on the stars, it will one day turn out marvelously alright. That is when you will get a recipe with good notes and instructions.

A Week Alone

It started with the nettles, with which I have developed a love-hate relationship. I love them, because they make delicious pies, soups, quiches, pestos, sautees and even nettle beer, which I will be trying out this spring. But I hate them because they hurt and sting and cover the little meadow that came with the country house, blocking passage and keeping anyone from even thinking about doing anything out there but carefully avoiding them.

Winter took the field of rough stalks and cut them down to size, though. the land became something we could walk across, a carpet of crunchy dry yellow twigs, last years old nettles, pushed flat to the ground by snow. It melted, the song birds came out just about the time the old dead nettles dried up. Tufts of new grass began to appear outside of nettle town. A patch of snow drops sprouted under the cherry tree. Sun warmed the earth. I began to imagine the possibilities, stand and take in the slope of the land, look back at the house.

With the sun's warmth, new nettles had also begun to emerge. Little hopeful green baby nettles peeking their cute little furry noses up through the old dead twigs from last year's enormous plants. They are cute, but they won't be for long, I know this. I have spent many evenings rubbing swollen spots where the nettles have gotten up my pant legs and pricked their needles into bare calves or pricked stray hands, hurting for hours like bee stings afterward. No summer walks along that country path in a skirt and espadrilles, that's for sure. But a thought of the baby clinched it. Do I want the child to be able to play outside at the country house? How will it be possible for a kid not have a rope swing on this ancient cherry tree? We don't know if this baby is going to be a boy or a girl. But one thing is clear: We have got to get the nettles under control.

They have formed a thick root network. A little hand spade, just a toy, really. I have taken to kneeling on the ground and loosening them, then standing up, wrapping my fingers about the roots, and heaving my weight into the labor of getting them out, artery and vein alike. They don't want to come. I begin stabbing, learning their ways, where to find the junctions, the twisted knots. If you get the nettle highways, the small roots follow more easily. A nettle city, a network, a planet. I am eradicating a whole nettle world complete with multiple levels of underground resistance networks. In 4 hours, I have just begun to chip away at a small square. At the end of my hard labor, a pitiful patch of turned rich earth, from which I had pulled only nettles from the ground. Their thick roots were piled in a heap in the sun. The soil is dark and fertile. Aside from one small tuft of wild chives, these nettles have choked everything else out.



At the end of the day, Bernadette's clicks and humming fire form a choir with an evening lark. The kitchen door is open. The feeder is illuminated and crowded with many species of birds. Loic is puttering around in the attic.

I ran my hands in icy cold mountain water from the tap for as long as I could stand it. I quickly pinched cold butter into flour with my numbed clean cold hands. We were to have a neighbor over for dinner, a man from the village who had come to cut the storm's fallen branches into neat logs that we stacked on the porch to use as firewood maybe next year.

My hands and forearms were near exhaustion just trying to make a crust. It's a good kind of fatigue, I thought to myself. From the pulling. Wouldn't it be nice to get these nettles taken care of this week. The weather is going to be nice. There is a clear circle of sunny meadow, between the apple and cherry trees that gets good all day sun. It is where the nettles thrive. I could probably turn it into a field of flowers if I had some time.

We've been waiting on this baby to arrive, and for that purpose, I have found myself easing big engagements off the calendar. Last week was the first week since January that I didn't have people coming in. 'This could be my only chance', I thought. The nettles seem compelling in the Sunday evening quiet before bed. We were lying there under the quilt, each with a book, and instead of readying my thoughts for a return to the rhythms of the city, I found myself veering in the opposite direction.

- And what if I stayed?
- You won't have a car.
- That's ok, I won't need it.
- Will you have enough to eat?
- I will.

A quick mental inventory. I had three eggs, a bit of bacon, 6 potatoes, some cabbage, a basket of good apples, some cheese, things in the larder like dried fruits and mushrooms, flour, rice, plus of course the Alpine butter, garlic in a braid from my trip to Sicily. The tuft of chives out there in the dirt patch. Then there were all those young nettles waiting for their fate. I even had some stock and frozen peas and beans in the freezer should the need really arise, and two big lumps of yeast for bread. We know the goat farm is within walking distance where I can get yogurt, cheeses, milk, everything I need in the end.

- You won't get bored?
- I might.

I smiled. It was settled. I made a few calls and sent a few messages. I shuffled chunks of time off the agenda. I was staying. We cuddled in the night, cherishing our sudden togetherness before a separation as my thoughts ventured in this new direction. Not an abyss, but a free fall kind of dive into a very different kind of week indeed.

The Nettles

The other morning at the market, I was kicking myself for not bringing my camera, but at the same time, feeling like maybe it was the right thing to do. The market, my market, on the quai St. Antoine, was simply clogged with people. Rightfully so. The more I cover all of the markets of Lyon, the more I come to adore my home base.

What was new at the market this weekend? Well, the herbs are coming out, and beginning to look absolutely gorgeous. New potatoes from the region were hot and moving, the fresh young green garlic shoots as well as the huge juicy odorous stacks of ail rose were stacked in fresh formations, making me look forward to our time down south with Loic's parents.

Since we have entered France's spring vacation season, it's a special time too because there are a whole lot of replacement vendors with interesting novelties to sell. Unfortunately many of them set their stands too close, not understanding Sunday, causing human traffic jams. But we can forgive them.

We look up to the wind blowing in the plane trees, the pollen wafting about. We enjoy the sun on our faces, and remember not long ago when it was positively cold along the riverside. We cherish a word with our regular vendors and producers as we wait patiently for a family with a stroller to rearrange their purchases and say hello to their neighbors. My volailler has been recently featured in the local paper, nearly 60 years on the quai St. Antoine. City strangers push through, pretending to be locals and exasperated by the crowd. Excuse me sir, to you have somewhere to be, a pressing appointment? What are you doing here? All in good time, we move along. Life is good.

The man who grows oregano (the only one in town, I think), sells very good eggs, and supplies me with verveine has a basket of nettles. Loic says "are you sure?" when I tell him I want some. Quick to bond with Loic, he ominously dons a suede glove and measures my portion. I ask if he has any fresh oregano yet, which goes very nicely with nettles, and he says: 'eleven days from now, madame. And how will you prepare the nettles? A soup?' I tell him I haven't decided.

oven crisped pork trotter with nettle sauce
nettle seasoned meat balls
red mullet with puréed nettles
a caramelized lamb pastilla with pine nuts and nettle infused jus,
little flans with nettle seasoned cream
creamy chestnut and wild nettle soup

I wash and remove the leaves and tender young ends, wearing gloves, of course. A bunch of fresh young green garlic is sliced and slowly sizzling in a mixture of olive oil and butter. I still haven't decided what to do with them, even as I begin to toss them with the hot garlic. That's the wonderful thing about nettles, you don't have to decide until late in the game. You can eat them simply sautéed, you can turn them into soup, a sauce, anything. One thing's for sure, you have to cook them or you'll get stung.



I ended up turning them wilted and richly scented with spring garlic into a pastry shell, adding fresh sausage, herbs, drizzling them with a couple of eggs, topping the lot with some grated Comté and baking it like that. Spring in a shell.