My baker's dozen--13 herbs I can't live without

07/14/2010
My baker's dozen--13 herbs I can't live without

Those of you who know me well know that my twin passions of gardening and cooking rule my life--and this website!  Nowhere is that more true than for herbs.  I can't live without a rich palette of these aromatic plants at my fingertips.  Because who knows what fillip of imagination might strike me when I'm in the kitchen?  I might suddenly need the inimitable witchcraft of celery and curry that is lovage.  Or the mysterious dark note of licorice root in a sauce for veal.   I might decide that to accompany a pigeon breast I simply must have a whole salad of nothing but herbs.  That sauce of fresh tomatoes for my grilled fish?  It must be perfumed with winter savory and capers.

Many of the herbs that I love to use are simply not available at my greengrocer's or even at the farmer's market.  So, if inspiration strikes, I can't run off to the store to get what I need--even if I wanted to.  That said, I must say that those of us who do buy our herbs are spoiled here in France.  The mainstays--bouquets of fresh thyme and bay leaf, flat-leaved parsley, chervil, chives, coriander, spearmint, and basil--are available in big bouquets for a euro or less.  Vendors keep them in buckets of water to keep them fresh--just as if they were flowers.  How much more ecological than those little plastic clamshells I see in U.S. supermarkets, which at any rate simply don't contain enough for me!

While some herbs are on my list because I can't buy them, others are there because of their fragility (they store poorly or practically not at all).  Such is definitely the case for chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium), the most fragile of all the herbs.  Even a freshly-harvested bouquet turns yellow in the refrigerator within a couple of days.  Plus, chervil's delicate anise flavor degrades rapidly.  You're much better off just stepping out to the garden and snipping some right before you serve it.  

Chervil is an herb I've only come to appreciate since I've lived here in France.  It has a much softer texture in your mouth than parsley, and its subtle aroma makes it the perfect garnish for many dishes where parsley would be too aggressive or wouldn't complement the dish.  A case in point:  Use chervil to garnish dishes containing fennel.  Chervil is used exclusively as a last-minute garnish; its delicate flavor evaporates if cooked.  For maximum beauty, don't chop chervil.  Rather, pluck the ferny leaflets with your fingers so their pretty shape remains intact.  Start adding chervil to your salads; you'll find it's addictive.

Chervil is a strong and rapid germinator (more vigorous than parsley)--a quality I always appreciate.  Plant the seed 1/4" deep in rich, well-drained soil, in full sun or part shade.  It bolts quickly, so make several small plantings progressively throughout the season.  In spite of its thin and delicate ferny foliage, chervil is surprisingly cold hardy, often surviving through lower temperatures than even parsley.  A fall sowing is more than worth your while, providing you with refined garnishes at least through December and all winter long in milder zones.  An added bonus to late plantings:  they won't bolt until the following spring!

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is a sturdy perennial that straddles the border between aromatic herb and pot herb.   A member of the Chenopodaceae, it's resemblance to other members of this family (spinach, dock, lamb's quarter, rhubarb) will be immediately apparent to you when you grow it.  Sorrel closely resembles dock (they are in the same genus), except its leaves are soft and succulent rather than fibrous and leathery, and bright lime green rather than dark, dull green.  In the refrigerator, sorrel is only slightly less fragile than chervil. 

While you might enjoy a bit of slivered sorrel leaves in a mixed salad, sorrel is usually cooked, which subdues its aggressive acidity to a pleasant piquancy.  The acidity of sorrel perfectly complements eggs, fish and veal, and is also fabulous as an ingredient in soups--especially the classics containing potatoes and leeks.  Sorrel has a curious quality when cooked:  the leaves collapse and seem to melt.  Only the briefest cooking is required.  Sorrel makes a practically instant and delicious sauce for fish or veal, provided you have a bit of crème fraîche on hand.  Roughly chop the leaves of a big bunch of sorrel.  "Melt" them over medium low heat in a bit of butter.  Whisk in some crème fraîche to taste, season with salt and pepper, and voilà--your veal chop or salmon darne is transformed into haute cuisine, all in the space of 5 minutes!

Sorrel is superbly easy to grow and very long-lived.  It can be started from seeds or divisions, and rapidly forms big, dense clumps with the fleshy taproots characteristic of its family.  My clumps have been in place for nearly 10 years without dividing, and still are vigorous and without any central dieback.  Plant sorrel in full sun; it tolerates a wide range of soils and thrives in clay.  Watering regularly and deeply will keep the foliage lush. 

As the long days of June arrive, sorrel will send up flower stalks much resembling those of dock.  As they appear, cut them off at ground level.  Doing so will stimulate your plants to produce a new flush of tender leaves.

Harvest sorrel by cutting through the leaf stalks with a knife.  In the kitchen, take the time to remove the fibrous central rib by bending the stems backwards from the leaves and pulling upward.  The stem will detach the tough part of the midrib, leaving you with nothing but tender, perfectly "meltable" leaves.  One note of caution:  if you have an intolerance to oxalic acid, do not eat sorrel.

Chives--that most delicate member of the onion family--is definitely an herb on my baker's dozen list simply because I use so much of it.  We eat mixed green salads every night, and I can't abide them without a big handful of chives snipped in at the last moment.  When I see those few chive blades in the supermarket clamshell, all trimmed to the same length, I just scoff, snort in disgust, and move on.  That's not even enough for my first serving of evening salad.

Likewise, snipped chives find their way into most of my bowls of soup , left to float prettily on the surface as a last-minute garnish.  I love chives on scrambled eggs--a childhood memory.  Another early chive love affair--begun when I was 3 years old:  Spread some cream cheese on a slice of good whole grain bread.  Press the bread--cream cheese side down--firmly into a heap of chopped chives.  The chives will adhere to the cheese. Top with a slice of juicy tomato and devour open-face.  I'm not going to tell you how many years  later I discovered that chives--nice and long from the garden--make elegant "strings" for tying up bundles of cooked asparagus, green beans, or tiny carrots.  Just try that with those amputated supermarket specimens!

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are another long lived perennial that does profit from being divided every few years.  Dividing keeps the foliage fine and feathery rather than thick and onion-like.  Plant them in full sun or partial shade, and prepare rich soil to stimulate their production of foliage all summer.  In late spring, chives send up myriad globe-shaped purple flowers.  Cut these--and dry them if you like--but cut them by all means.  Doing so will ensure your chives don't go dormant in the heat of summer.  In my Normandie garden, my clumps of chives invariably develop rust in midsummer.  I handle this by using hedge shears to cut the foliage entirely off at ground level.  I remove all the cut leaves carefully and compost them.  Then I feed and water the clump.  In 2 weeks' time, I have lush foliage again.

Mint might seem like a run-of-the-mill herb, but the only mint I really love is spearmint.  And spearmint is not easy to find at the store in the U.S..  Called menthe verte (green mint), spearmint is the only mint you ever see for sale in France.  Favored as much by North Africans as by Asiatics, spearmint is simply the definition of mint in France.  As indispensable to Moroccan mint tea as to a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho, spearmint's uses are too numerous to count.  One of the most delectable and unexpected harmonies I've discovered for it is with strawberries.  Add a couple of tablespoons of finely chopped leaves to a bowl of garden berries with a bit of sugar, allow to macerate 10 minutes or so, and you'll taste something more delicious than the sum of its parts.

Spearmint (Mentha spicata) is a no brainer in the garden.  It tolerates just about any soil and while, like all mints, it appreciates plenty of water, it's surprisingly drought-tolerant.  If you're worried about it becoming too invasive (all mints have underground "runners" or stolons), keeping it on the thirsty side will keep it under control.  Plant it in full sun for fullest flavor.

Spearmint sends up its stems of bright green, crinkly leaves early in spring.  Around midsummer, they branch and develop spikes of lavender-white flowers, much loved by butterflies.  The more you harvest your mint, the lusher its growth.  Of course, spearmint is an excellent herb to dry for winter tisanes.

For my next selection, I hesitated between thyme...and lemon verbena.  Although there's nothing unusual about thyme, I decided it was the plant I truly couldn't live without, much as I love having lemon verbena around in peach season.  After all, thyme goes into every single bouquet garni I use, and I use a lot of them.  It's the only herb that complements the grassy flavor of artichokes to perfection, and, ground in a mortar with a bit of garlic, then swirled into olive oil, it's the best of all seasonings for the delicate flesh of sea bream (daurade), a fish we often grill.  In fact, I could go on and on, anaesthetizing you with all the uses of thyme.

Culinary thyme (Thymus vulgaris) usually has dark green needly leaves that persist through the winter in milder climates and an inimitable aroma that I find difficult to describe.  But, curiously, the wild thyme of Provence (known as farigoule) is also T. vulgaris.   Yet the two plants couldn't be more different.  Thyme of Provence has gray-green leaves that are deciduous even in Provence, and the aroma--wow!--is entirely different from that of garden thyme.For me, it clearly comprises notes of lavender and lemon overlying the basic characteristic thyme aroma.  Garden thyme has white flowers, Provençal thyme has pink.  Yet, search as I might, I cannot even find a reference to its being a subspecies or variety of the species.  I've become addicted to the complex, flowery aroma of Provençal thyme, so that's the one I mostly grow.  Anyway, my nose knows, as I've read that it has more than 4% aromatic oils, as compared with around 1% for other strains.

At any rate, T. vulgaris is what's known in botanical lingo as a subshrub--a tiny shrub.  It has woody stems that persist from season to season.  Grow it in extremely well-drained soil and in the fullest, hottest sun you can muster.  The hotter the sun, the more flavorful your thyme will be.  Thyme never needs dividing, but the stems layer (form roots) where they touch the ground.  These may be cut off and replanted.  And if you don't shear off all the spent flowers, you will likely get a sprinkling of welcome seedlings.

Harvest thyme when it is in full flower.  The blossoming tips have the most wonderful and complex flavor.  In Provence, people harvest their year's supply for drying in late May when the lacy pink bouquets of thyme blossoms are scattered all over the countryside.  They would much rather use their home-dried, wild thyme than insipid bunches bought fresh at the green grocer out of season.  And I've found they're right.  So, in May I gather a big basket of flowering branches, and then, I simply let them dry in the basket.  (I've found that removing the dried leaves and storing them in jars seriously deteriorates the flavor.)  This basket lives in my kitchen for the rest of the year, within easy reach for flavoring practically everything.  Then, when the farigoule is in flower once again, I consign bunches of last year's stuff to the grill fire, where it perfumes whatever meat or fish is cooking there.

Since we've talked about thyme, we might as well go on to its close cousin winter savory (Satureja montana).  In Provence, these two aromatics are often found growing together.  Again, the wild strain of this plant differs markedly from the specimens offered in plant nurseries, which have oval, deep green, dully glossy leaves.  The wild strain has narrow, even prickly, gray green leaves with a distinctly peppery flavor.  In fact, one of its common names in Provençal is pebre d'âne, or donkey's pepper.  Winter savory (so called in English because it is perennial, as opposed to annual savory) blooms with small white flowers in the leaf axils in late summer and early autumn.  As with thyme, this is the best moment to gather it for drying, but the difference is not as striking as with thyme.

When you use winter savory--especially the wild strain--in the kitchen, chop the leaves as finely as possible.  As Robert Olney so aptly observed, turn them into dust.  If you don't, their stiff texture will prick your mouth.  Any Provençal will tell you that this is the herb of choice to accompany goat cheese, and in that sunny country beloved by herbs and goats, the cheeses are often aged with sprigs of winter savory, or sold with optional fresh sprigs to nibble with the cheese.

Meanwhile, I love winter savory (la sarriette in French) in tomato sauces, in place of the often-become-banal basil.  Make a sauce of fresh, meaty tomatoes with this herb, a bit of onion, garlic, and some capers, and use it to top hunks of grilled fish.  Winter savory also accompanies rabbit to perfection.

Well, since we've talked about thyme and savory, we might as well complete the Triumvirate of Provence with lavendar.  Most of us think of this plant more as  perennial flower than culinary herb.  Yet to do so is to deprive oneself of some of the most delicious desserts imaginable.  Use the blossoms--fresh or dried--of Lavandula angustifolia to infuse your ice cream ( sweeten it with lavender honey if possible).  Cook a rabbit ragout with rosé wine and flavor it with lavendar blossoms.  And use them to perfume almond biscotti--delicious!  But caution--lavendar has a powerful flavor so use it sparingly. 

Mix a lot of sand and gravel into your soil for growing lavendar--drainage is key.  Plant in full sun of course, and don't mulch with shredded bark or with anything else that could retain water around the crown of the plant.  Place it where it will not receive automatic overhead irrigation, and where it is not overhung by other plants--both conditions which sound the death-knell for it.  When you're planting lavendar for culinary or aromatic purposes, avoid lavandin, which is a less fragrant hybrid between sweet lavendar and spike lavendar.  Correction:  I shouldn't say lavandin is less fragrant, but its fragrance is muddled by notes of camphor which can be unpleasant in the nose and certainly on the palate.

The oreganos are certainly one of the most botanically confused tribes in herbdom.  And finding a truly fragrant oregano can be challenging, at best, and sometimes well-nigh impossible.  All the perennial oreganos have rosy flower umbels that butterflies are wild about, so they're fun to grow for that reason.  But for cooking, it's another story.  That's why in spite of its annual nature and somewhat persnickety character, I prefer marjoram (Origanum majoranum).  This rather diminuitive plant (rarely over a foot tall) has small, rounded, cupped leaves of a soft gray-green, and inconspicuous white flowers in spikes.  But its fragrance is striking--very sweet and piercing.  You often see marjoram recommended for flavoring chicken and other things, but I love to use it with...zucchini and other delicate summer squash.  Every time the summer squash start coming on, I start longing for marjoram.  Try cutting young tender zucchini in thin slices, dressing them simply with olive oil, a squirt of lemon, sea salt, and chopped marjoram.  Or, use a potato peeler to cut thin ribbons of zucchini, saute them in a bit of olive oil for only a few seconds, and then, the same treatment.  You'll see what I mean:  marjoram and summer squash are meant for each other.

Marjoram must have excellent drainage and cannot stand overhead irrigation.  Yet, paradoxically it does need to be watered regularly; its thin foliage is subject to drying out easily.  Harvest it for drying when it just begins to flower.

Incidentally, I finally found a fragrant perennial oregano for my potager in Provence, and it smells like...marjoram!

Along the dry roadsides of Provence in summer, you're bound to see the sunny yellow umbels of wild fennel.  Often, their stems and leaves are spangled with clusters of tiny white snails, which love to eat the foliage and are said to be delicious themselves (if tedious to consume) after doing so!  Wild fennel--with its pungently sweet anisey flavor--is one of my all-time favorite herbs.  And recently, it has become the glam-star of the foodie world.  Go to the website of any trendy restaurant or ingredient supplier and you're bound to see references to 'fennel pollen,' sold at prices approachcing those of saffron.  Well, grow your own "wild" fennel and you can laugh in their faces and shrug them off.  Fennel "pollen" is nothing more than the snipped tiny yellow fennel florets.  Zillions of them will be yours for the snipping if you grow the plant.

Wild fennel (Foeniculum vulgare--photo at head of article)  is a tough and drought-resistant perennial well-known by California residents, as it is naturalized all over the coastline there.  It is hardy at least to Zone 6 and possibly to Zone 5b.  Plant fennel in full sun and well-drained soil.  Once established, it needs no watering.  Harvest it anytime.  The foliage is fragrant and can be stuffed into the belly of a grilled or baked fish, or used to infuse anything where you want a fennel flavor.  Snip the "pollen" of course; it's a great alternative to basil on a salad of summer tomatoes.  But especially, harvest the seedheads while the seeds are still immature and green, and you'll have fennel at its most fragrant.  In Provence it's traditional to cut the stems at this stage, bundle them together and twist them into an informal wreath, or couronne, for drying.  Note:  the blackish seeds of wild fennel are much more flavorful than the big beige ones sold as fennel seed in commerce.

I've already written about learning to love lovage (Levisticum officinale) in this column.  I can only repeat that the more you use it, the more you'll love it.  This member of the carrot family is a medicinal herb, as its botanical name belies.  But for me, it's the strangely delicious combination of strong celery and curry flavors that I find irresistable and indispensable.  Alice Waters offered a recipe for lovage burgers a number of years ago--which I confess I never tried, not being a fan of burgers in general.  But, I've come to crave lovage with lamb.  I've devised a lovage crust to envelope a saddle of lamb before roasting that complements the aromatic character of the meat to perfection.  Another thing:  how many times have you found yourself needing a sprig of celery to flavor a broth or ragout...and not having any?  If you have lovage in the garden, you'll always have celery flavor--on steroids--at your fingertips.  But use it with discretion; it's veyr pungent and a single sprig will do.

Lovage is an incredibly tough and long-lived perennial which prefers--it must be said--cooler climates to hot, dry ones.  I'm comparing its behavior in my two gardens, Normandie and Provence, when I say this.  In Normandie, it unfurls its first, red-tinged leaves in early spring.  I always pounce on these, as by spring I'm craving lovage, and chop them into our salads.  By early summer it's a lush clump, and by mid summer, it's sent up towering flowering stalks that are taller than I.  These you should cut off at ground level to stimulate production of more lush leaves.

Meanwhile, in my Provence gardens, lovage persists, but sadly, as if dreaming of gentle Norman rainfall and less scorching sun.  Lovage is native, by the way, to mountainous regions of Europe, which explains its penchant for cooler temperatures. 

I've never tried drying lovage.  I suggest if you're really addicted to it, try blanching and freezing the leaves.  Otherwise, just wait--as I do--for those first auburn leaves to unfurl in spring.  They'll taste all the better  for having done without all winter long.

Easily confused with lovage when the plants are not in flower is angelica (Angelica archangelica).  And like lovage, angelica has one of the most unique flavors in the herb world.  A fragrance incredibly difficult to characterise, it's refreshing and a little sweet while remaining bracingly aromatic.  I know, none of this really communicates its ineffable aroma.  You'll just have to grow and taste it for yourself.  Personally, I think I would like to wear angelica perfume.

All the plant's parts are aromatic and have been used medicinally through the ages.  The seeds are used in the secret recipes of some famous liqueurs, including Benedictine.  But today, it's the stems that are best known, in candied form.  They're almost alwayd cited as a "cake decoration."  In fact, candied angelica stems are delicious to nibble with a cup of tea.  But, besides using the big hollow stems and the seeds to infuse your own liqueurs, you can infuse the syrup for a strawberry with a few angelica leaves or stems for a fantastically complementary flavor.

Angelica needs plenty of water.  It thrives in my Normandie garden and pouts in Provence, where I insist on growing it anyway.  In Normandie, it behaves like a perennial, while in Provence, after the seeds ripen, the entire giant stalk just keels over in exhaustion and that's the end of it.  Once you have angelica in your garden, you can collect the seeds and then plant them immediately to ensure its presence.  Only very fresh seed will germinate.

Licorice is an herb that from time to time, I just have to have.  Its evenly cylindrical, rhizomatous root (the only part that is used) is impossible to find in commerce fresh.  I hate licorice-flavored candy, but oddly, I love the mysterious dark note that licorice root adds to certain dishes.  I like to impale hunks of veal on the roots prior to cooking, and infuse the veal stock for the sauce with root as well.  I also love to add a length of licorice root to black cherry preserves.  In both cases, licorice adds a je ne sais quoi to the flavor bouquet without tasting anything like licorice candy.

Licorice is a long-lived, nearly indestructible perennial that you can nearly plant and forget about.  Only thing is, it will keep reminding you of its presence by sending up new shoots at a distance from the original plant, a consequence of its rhizomatous habit.  But it's not aggressive about doing this, and the rhizomes can easily be chopped back with a spade from time to time, yanked out and discarded (or used in the kitchen).  I do this about every two years in my Normandie garden.

Licorice is tolerant of a wide range of soils and needs full sun.  This year, we had a terrible drought and very high temperatures from March through June in Normandie.  Oddly, this seemed to make my licorice flower for the first time in 10 years (photo above left). 

The roots can be dried by why bother when you can dig some at all times except when the ground is frozen.  I'm uncertain of hardiness but would guess it can go at least up to Zone 5b.

I don't always cook French-inspired dishes.  From time to time I get a hankering for Asian food--especially Vietnamese cooking.  That's where perilla (Perilla frutescens) comes in.  Indespensable as part of the herb plate to accompany pho and other dishes, the lightly spicy, anisey leaves are also fantastic wrapped around a piece of salmon cooked in tempura.

There are three different variants of perilla, which vary not only in leaf color but also in flavor.  The least desirable has purple leaves, an unpleasantly strong flavor, and a habit of self-sowing aggressively.  The all-green variety has better flavor and for me, at least, has been less of a self-sower.  Finally, the variety favored by the Vietnamese--the world's greatest connaisseurs of perilla, has dull green leaves with a purple reverse (photo right).  In my Provence garden, it's almost 3 feet tall, with a handsome bushy shape, and by late August still hadn't formed flowers, so I doubt it will be much of a self-sower. 

Perilla likes well-drained soil but steady moisture at the same time.  Growing it in full sun yields best flavor, but it will still come along in light shade.  Its flavor is light and mild, and I doubt it would be good dried.  In any case, its charm is limited to fresh use. 

Well, that's my baker's dozen...but yours may well be different!  The important thing is to grow plenty of  herbs that will enhance your cooking with their bright fresh flavors.  Not only will you delight in the aromas they release as you walk through them, but think of all the trips to the grocery store you won't have to make!  Now that's true luxury.

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