Nettle Soup

The story

Nettles have been part of the Irish diet for more than 6,000 years, ever since the first farmers cleared the forests, according to the Ballymaloe cook Darina Allen. Early monks added them to their pottages, and an old saying told people to eat "four feeds of nettles during the month of May to purify the blood." Another ran, "A pot of nettles in May is health for a year and a day." Allen's own grandfather kept to the four feeds. In parts of County Cork the night of April 30 was known as Nettlemas, when boys chased each other, and sometimes the girls, with nettles. The plant turned up at Easter too: children used nettles, onion skins and gorse petals to dye their eggs, and folklore collectors in County Louth recorded nettle gruel as the only food eaten there on Good Friday. The soup is a plain country dish of potato, onion and leek, with young nettle tops added at the end and cooked only briefly so they keep their green color. Pick or buy the nettles before the plants flower, and serve the soup with brown bread as a first course at Easter or as a Lenten supper.