As you know, I was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to drink the nettle infusion from my first nettle foraging experience. Yesterday, I got my paper bags together and got ready for some serious nettle chopping. Problem - They had molded. Despite my efforts to shake the bags and look in on them every couple of days, mold still found a way to ruin most of my harvest. I was only able to save about half of one bag.
At this point, I was so bummed that chopping didn't even sound fun anymore, so I threw it all in my food processor and ground it down to tea leaf size. I put about an ounce in a one quart pitcher, filled it up, popped the lid on, and left it sitting out over night.
This morning I woke up to a medium brown liquid with a mellow, herby taste. I've been drinking it all day with no ill consequences, so lets hope that means that I didn't get any of the moldy stuff in my salvaged batch. Either that or that its a super-mold that will give me powers if I keep drinking it. I feel really good, but who knows if that is from the nettles or finally getting a good night's sleep. I will keep you posted on how I feel after a few days of the infusion.
In the mean time, I will have to scout out a new location for foraging and replace my lost nettles. This time, I think I will try to use the oven for drying to prevent the possibility of mold and to make it go faster. I will chock this round up to a good lesson learned.
I have also been doing some experimenting with my usual menus lately. I decided to introduce more polenta - it seems like a great fit for spring flavors. I made this particular batch with veggie broth and then just started dumping in whatever herbs I could find in my fridge as well as a couple of handfuls of arame seaweed. Here's what it looked like right after I had cooked it and was getting ready to put it in the refrigerator to harden:
As it was hardening, I chopped some onion, asparagus, Serrano pepper, savoy cabbage, and portobello mushroom and made a dipping sauce out of plain yogurt with Italian parsley, red onion, mint, and a dash of salt. Once the polenta was cold and hard, I cut it into strips and fried them until they were golden on all sides. I also began sauteing the veggies in a little olive oil.
I served everything together - polenta fries covered with the sauteed veggies and a dollop of the yogurt dipping sauce. I also deglazed the pan the veggies had been in with a little balsamic vinegar and poured that over everything. It was delicious (and once again, I have no picture to prove it). My husband thought it was one of the best meals we'd ever had. After the success of this dish, I am going to try and use polenta in more ways in the future.
