Nettle Soup

Ingredients

Products:
200 grams nettle (possibly fresh young leaves of nettle)
1 TBS flour
1 onion
1 TBS paprika
50 ml olive oil
l hot water
handful of mint leaves and parsley
3-4 TBS rice
salt
When soup is ready, you add:
1-2 egg yolks
200 grams plain yoghourt
Serve with
fresh lemon slices
plain yoghourt
 nettle soup

Directions

1. Blanche the nettle in boiling water for 1-2 minutes to kill the burning effect of the leaves. Drain and let it cool down. Chop roughly and make sure you remove any rough parts of the stems or leaves.

2. Heat the oil in a pot where you will be cooking the soup. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent. Add the flour and stir, then add the paprika, then water. Let it come to a boil. Don’t cover with a lid as it may overflow when it starts boiling.

3. Add the rice to the boiling soup. Salt it. And after about 5 more minutes add the nettle, then immediately turn down the heat to low. Let it boil lightly for about 10 minutes Add the parsley and mint.

4. At this point, turn the heat off. In a small bowl stir the egg yolks and yoghourt, add to this mixture a ladle-ful of the soup while you keep stirring. Then add ladle by ladle more soup until it almost fills the bowl, all the while stirring the mixture. Then pour the bowl back into the pot again, while stirring the soup the whole time. The purpose of this exercise is to diminish the chances of the egg yolks breaking up into small pieces from the heat. You want the mixture to be smooth. Serve the soup with a lemon juice and/or plain yoghurt (one or two TBS)