Stinging Nettle - Remedy or Food ?

My passion for herbs has always urged me to participate Kalyn´s Weekend Herb Blogging event. I use herbs in each and every one of my recipes, so that is not the problem. I just felt like all the herbs has been already blogged about, with some great detailed info, which I wouldn´t come up myself. I was looking for something unusual. Trying hard, I realized the only thing I needed to do is go back to my native Slovakia and there they are, growing wildly all over the place....

Besides parsley, dill or celery leaves, stinging nettle (Žihľava or Pŕhľava - hard to pronounce, I know) is one of the most common and widely available herb in Slovakia. There are enormous ways of utilizing it, whether dried or fresh, as a remedy, a cooking herb, as a tea or even as a cosmetic item. I will not go into the details, since they are more profound articles written about it, I will just outline some of my personal usage of stinging nettle.

• Being a great anti-rheumatism, my dad would always cut a big bunch of them (found anywhere in the countryside growing wildly in the fields) and whip our legs with it .... NOW, I see you going: `Ok, ... aaand?` WELL, the ´aaand´ part means that the adjective ´stinging´is not there for fun. Just couple of friendly whips with this thing will make your legs itchy and scratchy and .... just unbearable... (bleh, I am a real city girl, what can I say, running around the stinging nettle field is just not my thing)

More interesting usage for me is the one in the kitchen:

• drink - dried stinging nettle makes a great tea. The tea has a mild minty after taste and is rather thick (I guess it is the furry leaves).
• food - dried chopped stinging nettle leaves are great with eggs to make your breakfast omelette.

• cosmetics - lots of companies use stinging nettle to make shampoo. At home, rinsing your hair with a cup of stinging nettle tea leaves your hair shiny and dandruff-free.
• remedy - being digestive-friendly, a cup of stinging nettle tea helps with urine troubles and eases menstruation pains.

What I really like the most is to:

1. Make a large kettle of hot stinging nettle tea and drink it during the day. Making it is very simple. Take boiled water, pour over the dried stinging nettle leaves and let sit for about 10 minutes. Strain, but keep the leaves aside.

2. Leave a cup of the tea to warm down and rinse my hair with it.

3. Use the leaves (from making the tea) to make :


STINGING NETTLE PATTIES:
(Žihľavové fašírky)

prep time: 25 minutes

• stinging nettle leaves (leftover from making tea or soaked and drained well)
• salt
• black pepper
• oatmeals
  

Take the leaves, squeeze out most of the water and chop them really finely. I usually buy pre-packaged tea, so after making a cup, I simply open the pack and use the ´mush´). Sprinkle with salt and pepper and mix well. Add oatmeals and form into a big compact ball. Leave for at least 10 minutes for the oatmeals to soak up the liquids and homogenize with the tea leaves.
Break up the ball into small pieces and form small patties.
Shallow fry them from both sides in hot oil. Serve with any kind of dip or salsa while still hot. I served mine with roasted bell-pepper salsa (the yellowish mush on the pic below). I´ll post a recipe some other time.


This time, the WHB Event is hosted by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. I hope you ll enjoy this one...