Ciorba de urzici

“Sour stinging nettle soup”

I was making a dish of nettles (urzici in Romanian) cooked in the oven and I had a good few handfuls of nettles left over, so I thought I’d make a quick and easy soup for lunch based on a few Romanian nettle recipes I had read on the net. A lot of them also added rice, but I’m putting rice in the other dish so I left them out. Add about 50g of rice per portion at the beginning when you boil the nettles and garlic together if you want to use it. Notice that I only made enough for one bowl as it was only for me, so just multiply the quantities by the number of portions you want to make. It turned out quite tasty and surprisingly filling. The smell of cooking nettles somehow reminds me of the smell of those sheets of seaweed you use for making sushi.

Time: 30 minutes

Servings: 1

Ingredients:

About 150-200g of nettles (I didn’t weight them, but it was enough to loosely fill a medium mixing bowl

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons of sour cream (smantana)

3 green garlic stems (or two cloves of regular garlic and a small onion)

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Wash the nettles thoroughly in 3 or 4 changes of cold water.

2. Bring some water to the boil and blanch the nettles for about one minute and drain.

3. Bring another pan of about 600ml of water to the boil. When it boils, add the drained nettles and the chopped garlic (and onion, if using). Leave to gentle boil for about 15-20 minutes until everything is soft.

4. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolk and the sour cream together.

5. When the soup has finished boiling, blend it into a cream with a hand blender and stir in the yolk/cream mixture.

6. Simmer for another minute, stirring constantly.

7. Season to taste.

8. Serve with fresh cream and crusty bread.