Food - Nettle Soup

I like to eat and I like to cook. When I was very young my mother instilled in me a love of cooking and of plants ... if only she had let me wear a dress as well.

For years I've been meaning to cook both sorrel soup and nettle soup. We used to see the Turkish gastarbeiter collecting nettles on waste land under the autobahn bridge at Offenbach in the Spring. We didn't think much about it until one time we went to Schloss Vollrads for some fancy wine and they were having nettle day, with nettle soup and, I think, cheese wrapped in nettle leaves (I need to check that as I may have confused it with Yarg). We still have the recipe leaflet somewhere. Today is the day, finally ... I've picked and cleaned nettle leaves and have followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe.

This is basic nettle soup: large onion cut small and softened in 50g butter, then added to a large potato in small cubes and a large carrot likewise in 1 litre of stock (I used two chicken 'stockpots') and enough washed nettle leaves (no stalks) to almost fill the pot (probably about 750g wet leaves). The mix was simmered until the carrot and potato was soft and then chopped with a stick blender.

My French sorrel is growing well and that will be next now that I've taken my large stewpot out of the cupboard.