Cooking with Herbs

When I was a child, my mother kept a shelf in the kitchen cabinet devoted to dried herbs. The old Schilling red-and-white cans. I knew a few names, but had no idea how to use them or what their distinguishing characteristics might be. I was far more interested in the chocolate chips she kept hidden behind them than in the herbs themselves.

My high school English teacher, Laurie Staude, was the first to draw my attention to fresh herbs. I admired her. She carried on at some length one day about an “omelet sprinkled with fresh-picked rosemary.” I did not know what an omelet was, but I could use my imagination. So I headed off to a Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the hills of Marin County that had a gypsy wagon selling small herbs in pots. I bought a rosemary plant and carefully carried it home, set it in my bedroom window, and tended it with loving care. Then I chopped the first of its leaves and sprinkled them over a poached egg, believing that perhaps this was an omelet.

My second encounter was also with rosemary. A college friend and I were traveling from California to the Grand Canyon during spring break and I was doing the roadside cooking. We stopped at a gas station somewhere near Kingman, Arizona, and I noticed some scruffy plants around the periphery of the gas station. They smelled like rosemary, so I took some cuttings and used them on that night’s chicken dinner. Delish!

A couple of years later, when I had a garden with some space behind my college house, I actually planted an herb and vegetable garden all of my own. (I will not forget the very first dish I made from my garden treasures: a soup of cabbage, tomatoes, and rosemary.) By that time, I had become interested in both the medicinal and the culinary uses of herbs, so I had great fun cooking and mixing herbal decoctions for colds and flu.

Jump forward a few years and I was living in Southern California, leading tours, teaching herb cooking classes, and catering herb lunches at the largest herb nursery in the United States. Very little in this world could compare to a saunter through the mother garden on a warm day. Aromas of rosemary, oregano, sage, and more exotic herbs would rise up to meet me as I brushed against them. What a beautiful place it was! My lunches were redolent with juicy, herb-filled recipes and were ultimately laid out picnic style on the large rolling lawn that sloped down to the pond. Many of the recipes I developed then are still in my repertoire today; in fact, you might even find some of them in this book.

Truth be known, the garden itself was the inspiration for my cooking. Rather than choosing main ingredients around which to build a dish, I chose my herb or herbs from what looked good on any given day, then built my dish around them. As one of my culinary heroes, Angelo Pellegrini, wrote in his book The Food Lover’s Garden,

The garden becomes, as it has for me, a veritable arsenal of culinary suggestions. As you survey what you have grown, and come to know their individual and collective virtues, they suggest what use you may make of them on any given day to produce a good dinner. I know whereof I speak, for I have learned to listen to mine. And they have never disappointed me.

As I look back over the years, I can see the ways in which herbs have woven themselves in and out of my life. Even today, I continue to enjoy them in the garden, the kitchen, and even in flower arrangements throughout the house.

A Word About Herbs

First, a distinction: The term herb is used for the green parts (leaves) of aromatic plants, whereas the term spice refers to woody plant parts and seeds, such as cinnamon (bark) or coriander seed.

No one knows for sure why herbs developed such strong smells and flavors, but scientists have surmised that the sometimes bitter, aromatic oils that develop in little pods on the surface of the leaves are a natural insect repellent. In addition, these little oil glands also store moisture in the form of oil in the leaves, useful in the dry Mediterranean climate where many herbs originated and where water would quickly evaporate.

It is these oils (also called volatile oils or aromatic oils) that give the plant its characteristic flavor and aroma. As it turns out, the better the growing conditions (good soil, plenty of nutrients, and adequate water), the more fully these little glands develop.

Because the oils are so volatile (they evaporate quickly and easily), most herbs, unlike spices, don’t stand up well to prolonged cooking periods, and should best be added at the end of the cooking time.

How and why did people first begin to use herbs in their cooking? I can only guess that these flavorful green things made even the plainest ingredients taste more appealing.

Many years ago, I was working on a biography and staying in a small trailer near the creek that runs through Davis, California. The only cooking implements left behind by the
former occupant were an old vintage 1970s Crock-Pot and a very unstable old frying pan. In the spirit of adventure, I went to the local co-op and purchased every kind of bean it had, then cooked my way through them, taking just one kind of bean, cooking it, adding some good salt and then walking outside the kitchen to see what herbs were in the garden. I would usually flavor each soup with only one herb just to get a feeling for the purity of flavors in both the beans and the herb.

It may sound dull to some, but it was a wonderful experiment and led me to a career writing about the many things that can be done with a slow cooker—and now with herbs. Both are so practical and so useful for just about anything and everything.

I invite you to begin the adventure of getting to know the herbs in your garden (or out in nature) and to view any recipes as points of departure rather than as destinations in themselves. For this reason, I have chosen to present my recipes around a series of templates, or basic recipes that can become as different as night and day, depending upon how you choose to vary and arrange your ingredients. And I encourage you to play around with them and develop your own style and your own repertoire of recipes that work for you, your family, and your friends.

As with my book 50 Simple Soups for the Slow Cooker, I have taken an “easy on the planet, the pocketbook, and the palate” approach because I believe many people today are looking for dishes that are easy to make, soul satisfying, and yet have a “conscience.”
I see no need for exotic ingredients, when in many cases, you can eat very well from your own backyard, supplemented by a few items from the farmers’ market and supermarket.

There is no question that such a diet is relatively inexpensive (easy on the pocketbook), more healthful (does anyone still contest that a meat-based diet is not particularly healthful?), and a heck of a lot easier on the planet. In addition, growing some of our food, or even just the condiments, and spending some time with our feet planted in the soil every day, somehow begins to restore us to a closer connection with the land from which most of us have become so alienated.

A Word About Tableware

Digging around in the garden isn’t the only way to maintain a closer connection with the earth. I’ve found a means of taking that feeling one step further. To wit, I delight in using plates, bowls, and cups made from the earth itself. I love the feel of handmade pottery in my hands, the resonance of a fork against the plate, or ice clinking in a stone or earthenware cup. There’s a sense of soul in these handmade products: the soul of the earth, the soul of the potter, and the transformational magic of earth and fire—a heartbeat, if you will, that you will never find in a mass-produced, machine-made piece of work.

A Word about the Recipes

I have enjoyed cooking with herbs out of my garden for many years, and the older I get, the more I appreciate simplicity in cooking, and in life in general. I no longer feel the need to rush around collecting exotic ingredients to feed myself, my family, and my friends. The challenge I have set myself today is to create something beautiful and enjoyable out of ingredients I have on hand or in the garden. I have no intention of giving up my Parmigiano-Reggiano, or a good Sonoma Dry Jack completely, but for the most part, I am happy with simple dishes.

When I was a little girl, I had a fashion-plate auntie. She was beautiful. She had charisma. She had great fashion sense. And she never stopped touting the merits of the classic “little black dress.”

No matter what kind of budget you had, the little black dress should be the best you could possibly afford. Then, with a little ingenuity, you could dress it up or dress it down. Make a hundred outfits out of one simple black dress. And she did.

Auntie was no good in the kitchen. Her expertise was limited to the social register and the country club. But her “little black dress” theory works just as well in the kitchen as it did at the club or theater.

We should all have a few good template recipes—our culinary “little black dresses.” There should be one each for our favorite dishes, and it should work every time. It should be simple enough to be whipped up fairly quickly. And it should not involve a lot of ingredients or exotic items. Above all, it should be flexible, so that with the addition of a little of this or some of that, it can go downtown or uptown, just like auntie’s little black dress. In this case, variety can be supplied by an array of herbs and simple ingredients.

You will find a series of templates, or basic recipes, for each section in the book, with variations on a theme. In most cases, the first recipe in the section does not even include herbs in the ingredients. It is a blank slate, ripe for experiment. Use what you have. See what you like. By no means should you restrict yourself to the basic recipes or the variations. Be inspired by them to go out and create your own favorite recipes that you’ll go back to again and again.

Tips for Cooking with Herbs

• Wash herbs off in the garden, let them dry, then cut them.

• To dry larger quantities of herbs quickly, place them in a pillowcase and whirl it around. (You might want to go outside first, by the way.)

• Use a very clean, sharp knife for cutting herbs. You want to cut them cleanly, not mash or bruise them. Bruised herbs will oxidize and discolor quickly. If you are chopping them in a food processor, make sure the blade is good and sharp and that both the herbs and the processor are dry.

• To remove small-leafed herbs such as thyme or woody leaves such as rosemary, run your index finger and thumb down the stems.

• To chiffonade (cut into thin strips) herbs such as basil or mint, stack the leaves and roll them into a cigar shape, then, using a very sharp knife or a pair of sharp kitchen scissors, cut thin slices crosswise. A fresh herb chiffonade is a great finish for a dish.

• To snip small amounts of chives, gather the clean chives into a bundle, then snip them with very sharp scissors. It’s a bit easier than using a knife.

• Consider allowing each herb to assert its own personality by choosing cooking and chopping techniques accordingly. Coarsely chopped herbs are good for more rustic dishes, and they yield their flavors more slowly to the finished dish. Finely chopped herbs are great for smoother dishes and will blend in with other ingredients very quickly, but they will also lose their flavors more quickly.

• Culinary herbs can loosely be divided into “sweet” and “resinous” categories:

The sweet herbs are parsley, chervil, basil, cilantro, mint, hyssop, lovage, chives, tarragon, and dill. These always have more flavor when they are used fresh rather than dried.

The resinous herbs are hardier, woodier, and more pungent (hence the name resin) than the sweet herbs. They tend to dry well, but are still generally best when used fresh. Savory, sage, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, and thyme fall into this category.

• Fresh herbs should generally be added to a dish at the last minute. Cooking or “standing around” quickly vaporizes the volatile oils that give herbs their flavor and aroma. If you chop and add them at the last minute, their textures remain evident and their flavors stand out. Dried or more resinous herbs can be added early on in the cooking process with greater success.

• Try using some whole herb leaves, such as basil, mint, cilantro, or parsley, in a green salad. My very favorite salad consists of nothing but parsley freshly picked from my garden, dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

• At the height of the summer season, I love making bouquets of fresh herbs to place around the house as flower arrangements.

As I began work on this book, it was November, and I found myself sitting by the fire and dreaming of springtime gardens and new life.

I’m always ambitious at this stage. Sitting in my favorite chair and dreaming of “work.” I’m thinking of all the ways I can enrich the soil of my garden in preparation for planting. (You wouldn’t bring home a new baby without getting all the stuff ready first, right?)

Preparing the soil is a year-round activity. In fact, fall and winter can be a great time for the soil to rest and be rejuvenated. I dig the pulp from my juicer right into the soil, where it should decompose by springtime, leaving plenty of organic matter and nutrients behind. And my local specialty coffee company bags up its spent coffee grounds daily for people like me to take home and work into the soil. There are oak trees not far away where I can simply take a bit of delicious oak mulch home in plastic trash bags to loosen the soil. And what about the stables at the local polo grounds? Just make sure that anything you put in your garden is free of pesticides or other chemicals.

Sourcing possible enrichments for the garden soil can be like a treasure hunt. It can be a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too. Although I love foraging for stuff to go into my garden, I don’t always have the time for it, so Plan B consists of buying a good organic compost from the local nursery. I’ve recently found one that I like very much. It’s a good, reliable source of humus for my soil, and that, coupled with my foraged organic matter, seems to be turning my rock-hard, sandstone backyard into a nice little jungle of edibles.

Some months ago, my friend Lorrie, who is of Native American descent, went with friends to attend a rain dance on one of the reservations not far from her home. Her e-mail account was fascinating, and because of that, I wanted to share it:

Traditionally the ceremony is meant to be viewed from the adobe rooftops, which are accessed by ladders . . . The Katsinas came up from the ground. Their feet moved in unison, creating a beat that sounded like hundreds of people clapping all at once. There was a loud droning sound created by their voices. There is no irrigation here, but each plot of land has a small patch of dirt with little rows of corn growing in it. The crops are grown only with rainwater and the people rely on praying for rain. I wish you could have been there with me to see the colors, hear the sounds, and remember the ways. This is a culture that has kept ancient traditions, ceremonies, secrets, and prophecies intact. As the last dance was ending and the early evening sun was pouring through the clouds in a heavenly manner, the wind started blowing hurricane hard. I looked down the alley into the plaza where the dancing took place, and a dust cloud had arisen that encircled the people better than any Hollywood film computer graphics could’ve done. It obscured my vision and clouded the pueblos and the people on top of the roofs . . . and then it started to rain.

Lorrie’s story is touching and powerful and shows us how the Native American people acknowledged and worked with the forces of nature. I am told that ceremonies were used to draw the sunlight and the energy of the sun into the soil to help the young plants grow strong and to give them endurance.

I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if, in addition to all the wonderful foraged treasures and organic fertilizers I apply to my garden, I, too, like our wise Native American friends, could say a quiet prayer to the forces of nature for some backup.

Choosing Your Plants

I address a few of the most popular culinary herbs in this book, but you needn’t plant them all. Why not start with a few and see how it goes? Sit down and ask yourself whether some herbs in particular appeal to you. Which herbs would you really like to get to know? (If I were to answer that question right now, I’d probably choose dill, parsley, chives, and chervil. They are some of my favorites.)

Make your choices, then learn a bit about the herbs you’ve chosen before you plant them. For instance, how big will they get? Do they spread? Are they annuals (which need to be planted every year) or are they perennials (which last for several years)?

Most culinary herbs are Mediterranean in origin, which means that most of them like full sun. Herbs will grow in a variety of conditions; they just may not thrive. Herbs develop their best flavor when grown in full sunlight, with adequate nutrients and water. Their tempting flavors and aromas come as a result of volatile oils that develop in the plants as they grow. If you want to see what I mean, try an experiment. Buy some dill or basil from the grocery store, then do a comparison tasting with herbs grown outside in full sun. Almost without question, the herbs grown outdoors will be more flavorful and sturdy.

Coming from the Mediterranean region also means that most culinary herbs are fairly undemanding with regard to watering requirements. With adequate water, they will thrive. With insufficient water, they will be puny or may even die. In general, water them well when they dry out, but make sure you do not overwater them or leave them standing in water.

All herbs, with the possible exception of watercress, need well-drained soil, hence my emphasis on preparing your soil with plenty of organic matter before you plant your herbs. You want to encourage the growth of a strong root system, and the looser the soil, the easier it will be for your plants to send out roots and gather nutrients for themselves.

Herbs are essentially weeds, so most of them grow fairly easily, given basic beneficial conditions. As you may live in widely varying regions of the country, it seems a bit pointless to give instructions beyond the bare-bones basics. Herbs do as well in England as they do in southern Italy, for instance. You may simply have to alter your game plan from one locale to another.

Annual or Perennial?

It’s useful to know which herbs are going to be around for a while, and which herbs die off every year and need to be replenished. Annuals are plants that last only a year and must be replenished each year. Basil, chervil, cilantro, and dill are annuals. Perennials are plants that may last several years: chives, thyme, mint, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, and tarragon are all perennials. Parsley is a biennial, meaning it produces its seeds in the second season of its life, then dies. It may be useful to place the annuals and the perennials together in different areas of the garden.

Growing Herbs Organically

Many people seem to be oblivious to the fact that farming is not an easy way of life. Most farmers are interested in one thing: maximizing their margins of profit. So for most conventional farmers, your health is not the bottom line. It is not that any of these hardworking people would deliberately poison you or your family, but in most cases, corporate farming operations and individual farmers will choose materials and methods that make their lives easier and their profits greater, and considerations of your health above and beyond what is legal are just not on the top of their checklist.

Consumers sometimes fool themselves into believing that only substances (including pesticides) that are not harmful are used on conventionally produced crops. But keep in mind that several months before I sat down to write this book, the California Department of Pesticide Regulations approved the use of a very potent known carcinogen, methyliodide, for use in fumigating fields in California. They did this over the objections of a large number of very legitimate scientists and many consumer groups and individuals, clearly bowing to the economic pressures of agribusiness over the safety of farm workers and consumers. And this is only one of the more clear-cut cases of abuse.

You are the guardians of the health of your family, your pets, and your environment. And you cannot rely upon the government or agribusiness to put your welfare first.

In addition to the hazards posed to you and your family from synthetic pesticides, there are many dangers to your beloved pets. My vet, who has been in practice for nearly forty years, told me recently that when she first started to practice, cancer was seen only in older dogs and cats, but that now she sees it in animals who are only three or four years old. The connection between pesticide exposure and cancer in pets and humans is clear. So if you value your kitties and pups, don’t place anything in your garden or soil that isn’t clean and natural.

Container Herb Gardening

Perhaps you have no garden in which to grow herbs, and you are thinking about putting a few pots on your terrace or back patio. Good idea. I nearly always have a few herbs around growing in pots, and I enjoy collecting pots in which my herbs look especially attractive. If you grow in pots, remember a few things: Start with good organic potting soil. (Again, that emphasis on organic. Just get out of the habit of buying chemical stuff. No one needs it, except the producers who are making money off it.) Be sure to pay attention and adjust both fertilizer and water appropriately. For instance, because they are porous, unglazed clay pots cause water to evaporate quickly, especially in hot weather; plastic pots may be unsightly, but they do a better job of conserving moisture. In most cases, let the soil in the pots just barely dry, then water again.

One day, a lady brought a handful of very sorry-looking basil to the herb farm. She asked me what was wrong. It had no flavor, poor color, and looked sick. I asked her whether the herbs were growing outside and she responded that they were growing outside in a pot. I asked how long they had been there and she told me she had been growing basil in the pot for several years! I asked if she had ever fertilized the poor things and her response was “No, I didn’t know you needed to.”

You must fertilize herbs in pots because they can’t keep reaching out roots to new soil and nutrients. When you initially pot them in potting soil, there are nutrients in the soil that will help them grow. But fairly quickly those nutrients leach out through the bottom of the pot. Fertilize lightly every month or so during the growing season, using an organic fertilizer. Talk to your local nursery or garden center for suggested brands.

Tips for Growing Herbs

• Good soil is the key to successful gardening. Herbs need well-drained soil, so if you have a clay soil (where the water stands on the surface of the soil for more than a minute) add some good, organic compost, which adds nutrients and improves soil structure and permeability.

• They need adequate nutrients if they are to produce healthy leaves with full flavor, so be sure to provide some fertilizer and adequate water for them all the time. This is especially true if your herbs are planted in pots. All the plants in my garden (fruits, herbs, vegetables, roses) get a dose of good organic fertilizer when they are planted, and again two or three times during the growing season. Water your herbs as soon as the soil around them dries out.

• Most culinary herbs are Mediterranean in origin, which means they love the sun. Herbs grown in full sun will have a much stronger flavor than those grown indoors, in a hothouse, or even in the shade. Choose a spot where your plants will get at least six hours of direct sun each day.

• The flavor of the leaves begins to change once the plant has begun to flower, so it’s important to keep the flowering heads of plants such as basil picked just as soon as they appear.

• If you are buying small starter plants from a nursery, or growing herbs from seed, do your homework. Find out how big/tall the mature plant might be so that you can plan your garden accordingly.