March, Bitter and Bright

Snow at the threshold, forsythia at the window, and green nettle soup for early March.

In February’s blog, we sat with uncertainty. We reached for peace where we could find it, in tea, in ritual, in the smallest acts of comfort, and still we kept fighting. Now, senselessly, we are at war with Iran. So why hold back?

This month has carried its own sharpness. It opened with anger. It brought the glossy headline of René Redzepi and Noma’s Los Angeles pop-up, all spectacle and appetite, even as abuse allegations, protests, and sponsor pullouts gathered around it. Redzepi has acknowledged causing harm. None of this surprises me. I came up in kitchens shaped by men like that, where brilliance was too often used to excuse cruelty, and where the people doing the labor were expected to absorb the damage quietly. Another call for change, and still no one I know is surprised, not even a little. Maybe the people paying inflated prices for precious plated bits of food will finally wake up and smell the fermented sauce. It has gone off. It has been sitting too long. We need a sharper pivot in how we treat human beings. No plate, no pop-up, no chef mythology is worth more than a person.

And still, spring is budding, quietly insisting on itself. It is not always soft. Sometimes it comes swollen and painful, energetic and raw in its giving. Outside my kitchen window, the forsythia is blooming bright yellow again: one more year without Meshka (my dear friend and a story for another time) and one more spring waking up anyway.

This morning I woke to a blanket of snow, the freeze holding back spring for one more day. As if the season itself were hesitating at the door. As if winter, not quite finished with me, wanted one last word.

I’m angry, but I move on. I eat. I work. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I keep fighting. And off to the kitchen and into the market I go.

March has a stomp to her, but she is delicious too. She arrives sharp and muddy and full of nerve. She brings stinging nettles, wild and green, a little feral until heat and butter tame them into something lush. We are still in the realm of brown and orange, roots and storage and cold-clung sweetness, and then come the first bright provocations: crisp, peppery radishes, tender shoots, and greens still carrying their bitterness, not yet convinced by the season.

I’m okay with this ache. This is what birth looks like sometimes. Not softness. Not ease. A little swollen. A little tender. A little unruly. The newness of spring does not ask permission before it arrives.

So I will cook what March gives me. I will wrestle with it, coax it, salt it, blister it, braise it, sweeten it where needed, and let it stay sharp where it should. I won’t make it submit. I’ll work with it. I’ll meet it where it is.

Because that is what I know how to do.

With hunger. With heat. With spring.

Green Nettle Soup for Early March

Serves 4 to 6

This is a soup for the days when spring cannot quite commit. Nettles ask to be handled properly, but once they meet heat, they relent. What was wild becomes gentle. What stung becomes supper.

A quick note on nettles: If you’re foraging your own, wear gloves and gather the young tops in early spring, before the plants flower and turn tougher and more bitter. A brief blanch or cook takes away the sting. Take only what you need. The patch, and the creatures that depend on it, need the rest. We eat nettles now because they are one of spring’s first real greens: vivid, mineral, a little wild, and exactly right for this moment.

What you need:

• 10 to 12 ounces fresh stinging nettles, thick stems removed

• 2 tablespoons butter

• 2 large leeks, cleaned well and thinly sliced

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced

• 2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced

• 5 cups chicken or vegetable stock, plus a splash more if needed

• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 1 to 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 2 to 4 tablespoons crème fraîche, cream, or plain Greek yogurt, if you like

• Good extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

How to make it:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the nettles and blanch for 1 to 2 minutes, just until wilted. Drain, rinse under cool water, and squeeze them dry enough to handle comfortably. Roughly chop.

In a soup pot, let the onion and leeks cook in butter until they go tender and nearly melt.

Add the potatoes and stock. Bring to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are completely soft and give way easily to the side of a spoon, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Add the chopped nettles and simmer 1 to 2 minutes more, just long enough for everything to turn vividly green.

Blend until smooth. Return the soup to the pot and add lemon juice a little at a time. Season well with salt and pepper. If it feels too thick, loosen it with another splash of stock.

Stir in crème fraîche, cream, or yogurt if you want the soup a little richer.

Serve hot with a generous drizzle of good olive oil on top, crusty bread, and good butter. At this point, crusty bread and I have a lot in common: rough exterior, tender center, and absolutely no interest in pretending otherwise. Menopause, baby.

Maybe that is what I am doing this month too. Not erasing the sting, just learning how to handle it. Coaxing something nourishing out of what first arrived wild.