Ortiga

Blanch, squeeze, chop, butter. Fat is what makes the mineral note read rich.

Starch takes the sting out conceptually and the bitterness practically.

Blanched nettle and curd, wrapped in pasta. Spring in Liguria, every year.

Dairy fat rounds a green so mineral it can taste like iron on its own.

Folded through an omelette; the yolk fat carries the chlorophyll.

Sulfur against a hard green; both hedgerow, both spring.

Salt and glutamate stop the leaf reading as merely healthy.

Same hedge, same fortnight. Pick both on one walk and cook them together.

Nutty grain under mineral green; the broth thickens itself.

Iron-mineral leaf against iodine; blitz the nettle into the dressing.

Green hexenal over boiled lactose. The milk ends up grassier than the leaf.

Green hexenal over yeasty sour. It tastes like a field after rain.