Recipe below: Homemade Stinging Nettle Pappardelle with a Walnut and Spring Onion Condimento
It starts every April. I find myself roaming around my backyard looking for edible green stuff popping up. Garlic mustard, dandelion, chickweed, wild garlic. I eat all of them. I even have a romance about them, which seems to grow stronger every spring. I guess I’m channeling my Puglian grandmother, who walked the Westchester golf courses in search of the tenderest spring dandelion leaves, to the embarrassment of most of our family. She made a dandelion and baby meatball soup that was an all-time favorite of mine.
What I cherish most this time of year, what I most hope to find, is stinging nettles. This year, so far, to my disappointment, I haven’t found any in my yard. I’m not sure why. There are usually some around, growing up on the edges of our stone wall, among other places. This was disturbing when I really wanted to make stinging nettle pesto. The dish marks the beginning of spring for me, and if I don’t make it there will be a hollowness in my soul. So I went to the Union Square Greenmarket looking for nettles, and I found them being sold by a guy who had a lot of unusual green things. I actually paid for the “weed”. And I made a most delicious pesto. If you’d like to try it, here’s a video showing how I make it.
Then the other day while checking out my newly sprouted garlic, which I planted in November in my neighbor Adrianne’s vegetable garden, I noticed a lot of little stinging nettle plants there, scattered through her newly mulched plot. I couldn’t believe it. Nettles must like good soil and mulch as well as distressed misery locations like against my stone wall. (That doesn’t really surprise me. I’d love to have a $3,000 mattress.) So I picked all those highbrow stinging nettles and went ahead with my second most favorite thing to make with them, fresh pasta. It came out really well, a pretty deep green. It tastes a bit like a cross between spinach and potting soil, but in a good way.
I hope you’ll try it. To me it’s special, even a bit magical.
Note: Stinging nettles have been used in Europe for hundreds of years for various medical purposes, mainly as a diuretic but also for calming joint pain. I recently checked on webMD, and it claimed that stinging nettles are effective for treating enlarged prostrate, hay fever, arthritis, and possibly high blood pressure and blood sugar. So you might as well give them a try.
Homemade Stinging Nettles Pappardelle with a Walnut and Spring Onion Condimento
For the stinging nettle pappardelle:
A good-size bunch of stinging nettles
3 large eggs
2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
½ cup semolina flour, plus more for rolling
Salt
For the walnut condimento:
Extra-virgin olive oil
1½ cups very fresh walnuts, well chopped
1 small spring onion, cut into small dice, including some of the tender green part
1 spring garlic clove, minced
3 anchovy fillets, chopped
A big pinch of sugar
Salt
Black pepper
The grated zest from 1 lemon
About 6 large marjoram sprigs, the leaves chopped
The leaves from about 10 big parsley sprigs, lightly chopped
A chunk of grana Padano cheese
Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. I like to insert a strainer pot inside so I can use the water both for blanching the nettles and then for cooking the pasta. Add a good amount of salt.
While wearing gloves or just being careful, cut off all the thick, tough stems from the nettles, below where the leaves are, and discard them. Put the remaining leaf ends of the nettles in the pot, and blanch them for about 2 minutes. Lift them from the water into a colander, and run cold water over them to bring up their green color. You’ll see that when they’re cooked their stingers completely disappear. Squeeze out as much water as you can (you’ll also notice how strangely dry they feel, almost as if they’re waterproof).
Now remove any remaining big stems from the leaves, leaving only leaves and the most tender tiny stems. You’ll want about a packed cup or so of blanched nettles. You can use any extra to include in the pasta sauce, if you like, or in an omelet or a soup.
Put the nettles in a food processor, and give them a few good pulses. Add the eggs, and process until you have a fairly unified looking purée (it’ll be a bit streaky, but that’s it’s nature and is really nice). Add the flours and a little salt, and pulse until you have a shaggy ball. If it seems too wet for pasta dough, add a little more flour and pulse it to blend. If it’s too dry, add a drizzle of water, pulsing it in.
Sprinkle a bit of flour on a work surface, and dump the pasta ball out on it. Knead the dough until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. Cover it with plastic, and let it rest about a half an hour so it can relax.
Dust two sheet pans with flour.
Dust a work surface with flour. Cut the pasta into two parts, and put one aside in plastic wrap. Now what you want to do it start rolling out your dough. I used a mattarello for this, a long, narrow wooden rolling pin. I recently bought a new one on Amazon.
Roll out the dough as thin as you can, adding more semolina or regular flour as you go, to prevent sticking. It’s hard to explain the best way to do this. If it’s your first time hand-rolling pasta you might want to study a couple of YouTube videos on the subject, or just use your hand-cranked pasta roller to make long sheets. My hand-rolled piece stretched out to an about 15-inch squarish shape. Do the same with the other piece of dough that you had set aside. Then let your two pasta sheets dry for about 40 minutes, so they lose some tackiness. That will make them easier to cut.
Cut each pasta sheet in half, and dust its top with semolina or regular flour. Loosely roll up each piece into a cylinder, and cut it into ¼-inch slices, making a quick cut. I rolled mine lengthwise, so my pappardelle were quite long, but that is a judgment call for you, depending on the shape of your pasta sheet and how long you like your pappardelle. Toss the pieces onto the sheet pans, unrolling them as you do. You should now have long strips of pappardelle. Make sure they’re all lightly coated with semolina, so you won’t have a problem with sticking.
When you’re ready to serve, bring the cooking water back to a boil.
While the water is heating, take out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the walnuts, onion, garlic, anchovies, sugar, a little salt, and some black pepper. Sauté it all until the walnuts just start to toast, about 2 minutes. Turn off the heat.
Drop the pappardelle into the water, and cook it until just tender, about 4 minutes. Drain it, leaving some water clinging to the strands and also saving about a cup of the cooking water.
Add the pasta to the walnut condimento. Toss it gently over low heat, while adding the lemon zest, a few tablespoons more olive oil, and a bit more cooking water if you need it to coat everything well. Add the marjoram and parsley, and toss again, tasting for salt and black pepper.
Transfer the pasta to a large, wide serving bowl, and sprinkle the top with a tablespoon or so of grated grana Padano, mixing it in. Serve right away, bring the rest of the cheese to the table.
Erica De Mane 
Glad you were able to make your “spring” recipes. Fresh tagliatelle was the first thing I ever made with them, don’t remember what I dressed them with. I really like the condimento you made. Sadly, I’d probably skip the anchovies…I know…but I simply find the taste too strong and I wish it were otherwise, trust me! Had to laugh at your comment that the taste is a bit like a cross between spinach and potting soil. I’d love to see a sign at our farmers market with your description and see the reactions/comments! Love it! Happy cooking Erica! Can’t tell you how much I enjoy your posts!
Ciao, Phyllis
Phyllis, Certainly, leave out the anchovies. You really don’t need them for this at all. I just love them so much. So glad you like my posts. XXErica