At a dinner at Union Square Café last week I had an unusual appetizer: a nettle sformato. Billed as made with La Tur cheese, garnished with tiny morel mushrooms, and topped with a sunnyside-up quail egg, the deep green custard was utterly delicious. I’d hardly ever eaten nettles before and never cooked them, but I knew at once that this was a dish I had to try making.
I knew where to get the nettles, too. The restaurant is just a block from the Union Square Greenmarket and buys much of its seasonal produce there. I’d already seen nettles on the Paffenroth stand at the market this year, but all I knew about nettles had deterred me from considering them. (E.g., there’s red print on the sign that says ** Be careful when handling – can cause ITCHING **)
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Before buying any, I had to find out how to treat them, other than not touching them without gloves! Fortunately, Elizabeth Schneider’s Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini has a section on nettles, with handling directions and recipes. I also looked at various savory flan recipes in my cookbooks, to get an idea of the proportions and ingredients I’d need for two servings. Then I went to the market and gingerly carried home a bunch of nettles.
Wearing plastic gloves, I cut the leaves off the stalks, sloshed the leaves in cold water to clean them, dropped them into boiling water for a minute, drained and plunged them in ice water, drained again and squeezed out the water. The stinging substance was deactivated by that point, so I could remove the gloves.
I had 1½ cups of packed nettle leaves, which Schneider said would “resemble coarse puree.” Mine didn’t. Those greens were considerably tougher than squeezed spinach. I thought if I spun them in my mini food processor they might turn into puree, so I tried that. Nope: They came out looking like wet grass clippings.
Hm. Well, I continued with the recipe, hoping for the best.
I’d been able to get a round of La Tur, which is a creamy Italian cheese made from a combination of cow, sheep, and goat milk. I heated half a cup of heavy cream in a small pot and added two ounces of the cheese, stirring until it all melted together. I mixed that into the nettle greens, added a beaten egg and some salt, and processed that in a blender until it all finally consented to become something like a puree. Still very fibrous, though; I don’t know what I could have done about that.
I had intended to make only two flans, but there were two cups’ worth of puree, so I buttered four half-cup molds, set them in a bain marie, and baked them at 350° for 25 minutes. I didn’t have quail eggs available to top them with, but I did have a garnish of a few extra morels that I’d sauteed as part of our main course* that evening.
Alas, my flans were disappointing: fairly bland and very coarsely textured – nothing like the suavity of the Union Square Café version. I will say the morels perked up the nettles’ flavor quite a bit. But in retrospect I see I should have used much more cream and egg to smooth and soften the custard. Or, more practically, have used only half as many nettles for my quantity of cream and egg, and made only two flans. Because I now have to think of some way to salvage the remaining two portions!
* By the way, that main course was a strong consolation for the inferior flans. Sweetbreads and morels à la maréchale, served in puff pastry cases. Recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering. Lush! And another consolation: Both dishes loved the ’82 Prunotto Barbaresco Rabaja we had chosen for this dinner to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. We did too.
Happy Anniversary.
Also your nettles may have been too old.
Thank you. You may well be right about the nettles — those leaves were pretty tough!
My daughter, Sarah, says the Union Square Café undoubtedly has a Vitamix to purée the nettles. Your version still looks good!
Oh dear — a new Must Have kitchen toy? I must try to resist it. Actually, I’m going to try to re-whomp the daylights out of the two leftover portions with some more cream in my regular food processor. We’ll see if that does anything helpful.
The onlynettles I have tried is a nettle cheese from our local greenmarket. I like it.
Good post, well done! You also might enjoy Nettle Gnudi (http://dgourmac.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/stinging-nettle-gnudi/).
Your gnudi look very good. I see they’re also kind of speckled, like my flans. The restaurant’s sformato was a uniformly creamy green, so I suspect the Vitamix mentioned by another commenter might have been what I’d have needed. Plus younger leaves, as yet another commenter suggested. I never realized there were so many nettle fanciers around!
Thanks so much for your comments! Like you, my attraction with nettles began in San Francisco. I ate them first in a dish at Rose Pistola (perhaps on pizza), then bought some at the farmer’s market to bring home and cook. Younger leaves are definitely better, and I will try the VitaMix next time.
Just for the record, it’s not San Francisco in my case. It’s a different Union Square — mine’s in New York.
When I married my first husband, many years ago, we were both Macrobiotic (diet). One of the dishes we served was Nettle Pastries. We only told guests after they ate and they were shocked. It was absolutely delicious.