Cru’s Stingy Nettle Risotto

My favorite spring things that must be eaten and eaten quickly because their window of availability/edibility is very short are fiddleheads, ramps, and stingy nettles. There are others, but these are the ones you can find growing up and down the Jersey Turnpike and I love local fare.

At this point, ramps make a good showing around town and fiddleheads are pretty well represented. Less often do you find stingy nettles. Which is somewhat ironic because, as awesome as the garlic/onion flavors of young ramps are, and as crisp, fresh, and young as the unfurled fiddle head is, nettles are the essence of young, spring, chlorophyll-laden greenness.

I like to make a nettle pasta that I top with a simple vongole, which is fun. More fun is stopping by Cru on the way home Monday night to see what springy stuff they're doing and finding the risotto in its usual spot, but currently made with stingy nettles and stracchino.

Sticking in northern Italy, where nettles are used well and often, Shea has made a creamy risotto with toasted pine nuts, heaps of wilted nettles, and the lactic richness of a simple cheese. A dish brimming with greenness.

It wouldn't be Cru without a wine pairing. To go along with it, Robert tried us on two wines --Quintarelli's Sauvignon, and a Smargd Gruner from the Wachau in Austria. The Sauvignon had a nice acidity that cleaned through the richness of the dish, but the Gruner ran away with the show. Almost viscous in its richness, it had herbal notes of tarragon and other parts of a spring mix; truly perfect with the dish.

So there you go: a nettles dish. It is spring after all.

Comments

[hannah]

Ramps I am finding in abundance--fiddleheads not so much. My local produce guy (in Carroll Gardens) got 5 pounds in last saturday and they were gone by 3 PM! I've had my ramps for the season, now I need morels and fiddleheads (risotto and sauteed in fresh butter respectively, mmm...). The Union Square greenmarket hasn't had either that I have seen, and my produce guy closes before I get out of work--any leads for me??