My first encounter with nettle soup took place in my childhood when my grandma made it one fine spring. But my grandma (my dad’s mom) was always a bit of an exotic woman to me.

I did not see her as often as the other members of our extended family living under the wing of my other grandma. On her weekend visits she looked very unlike other women in our family: always dressed in business suits with her grey scarce short yet still curling hair dyed purple she would come with a bag full of delights.

Other times she would take me to stay with her overnight: her house was exotic too - she lived alone on 7th flour of a tall apartment block. Without a garden with vine tomatoes or a dog which we had she was still into the natural way of living. Maybe even more than the rest of the family living closer to the land. Among the rest she was making nettle soup every spring.

While picking lunch from a roadside was exotic to me I was not completely unfamiliar with foraging. My other grandfather would walk the dog in the nearby forest every morning: in summer he would always come back with a bag of mushrooms, bunch of medicinal herbs and a small jar of freshly picked forest strawberry or raspberry.

This was not exotic to me. Neither to any Russian older than 30 who grew up in the families foraging in the forests and their own gardens. I still remember a story how an aunt of my friend moved from Russia to Switzerland and outraged her Swiss husband by picking some mushrooms as they walked in a park.

Little we all knew that some two decades later foraging would become a fashion in the West. Everyone would leave their homes and head out into the wild to forage. Trend setting Rene who has already contributed to the rising popularity of Scandinavian cuisine outside of Scandinavia the proper would take off on a quest of finding real Scandinavian flavors in the forests, on the meadows, sea fronts and even the very depths of herein. He and a whole bunch of other cooks would transform the whole concept of foraged food - simple and free by default - into a fancy dining. This is one side of spectrum. The other one has the home cooks who look to drive down the cost of their meals cooked daily and often for large families.

To me it is neither fashion no fierce need to drive down the cost. I grew up with forest nettle soup making grandma and mushroom foraging granddad. My dad have thoroughly researched the possibility of eating and medicinal use of every single herb he could find around the since he started raw eating two years ago. I share the house and kitchen with my mother-in-law who thinks nothing about throwing starflower/borage (hodan otu) stems into scrambled eggs or wrapping her dolma in cherry leaves. And if we all get into the trend and stay on budget at the same time without doing anything special so the better.

I have recently picked the first batch of nettle at our farmhouse and made two soups. My first nettle soup was for the 8 of us - all Turkish besides me - meaning rather conservative about the taste and look of their food. I pureed the nettle, thicken the soup with corn flour and added chicken stock. Some thought that my mother-in-law have cooked that. And I consider that the highest degree of recognition.

The second nettle soup was to revive my grandma’s legacy. I still wonder how the nettle egg drop soup could exist in the place we had no clue about Chinese-style soups back then. But at least I know where I got the idea of adding red pepper flakes from.

Important Tips on Foraging And Cooking Nettle

Nettle is best when young so watch the season where you live: in Istanbul there was some starting mid February and in Sapanca with so much snow I could see the first nettle springs only mid March.

As the name suggests stinging nettle stings: use rubber gloves or thick plastic bag worn as a glove to pick up nettles. I cut only about 3 upper rows of leaves including the stem with long scissors - leaving the rest of the stem and definitely the root so nettle can continue growing.

Still wearing the gloves go through the foraged nettle to remove anything foreign and then soak the nettle in a large bowl of cold water for a few minutes. Using cooking tongs transfer the nettle leaves on a sieve (I like using my rice strainer for convenience) to let excessive moisture drain. The nettle leaves are now ready to use.