Usually I like picking nettles when they are still young and really small as the leaves tend to be softer. But for this dish i recommend them to be a little bit bigger making it easier to use them as "wrapping paper" for the potatoes. I don't know if your garden is full of these usually unwanted nuisance of a weed but nowadays as long as they are not somewhere where I need to walk and get stung/burned, I see this as free food given to us by Mother nature. Nettles can be used in the similar way as spinach and they are full of vitamin A, C, iron, potassium, manganese and calcium. To remove the stinging chemicals just soak them in water...this way they will be more pleasurable to eat. Nettles can be used in purees, soups, sauces, pancakes, bread etc.
Originally I think the idea of serving new potatoes wrapped into stinging nettles came from Noma (one of the top restaurants in the world). They had a dish where the new potatoes were wrapped into nettles and cooked in salt and yeast.
As we have loads of stinging nettles in our garden and we tend to eat most meals in the summer with new potatoes freshly picked from the ground I thought this is a fun way to serve the potatoes.
Here is my easy version.
1)Pick fresh nettles and blanche them in water to make them easier to handle.
2)Wrap them around the new potatoes and place on a bed of salt.
3)Heat up the oven to 140°C and let them bake in the oven for 30-40mins. This way when covered in leaves the potatoes are almost steamed.
I guarantee that these are good...atleast I like them...even with just a knob of butter :)
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