Herbal Pestos and Spice Blends

By Darcey Blue French

Culinary herbs are a popular and easy way to add flavor and interest to our daily meals, but did you realize that those same culinary herbs also pack a nutritional and health-boosting punch as well? Feeding ourselves is something we do three times a day, every single day of our lives, and our food should be our first medicine. Including health-boosting herbs in our daily fare is a flavorful and easy way to use herbal medicine as preventive medicine. It’s easier to maintain health than regain it. I’m going to share with you several recipes that I use in my own herbal kitchen to add flavor and herbal healing benefits to my meals. They provide vitamins and minerals, improve digestion, strengthen immunity, and balance our well-being.

Herbal pestos are a delicious way to use fresh herbs that are abundant in your garden during spring and summer, and can be frozen for use later in the year. The spice blends use dried herbs and spices, which you can grow yourself and dry, or purchase in bulk. These blends can be placed on your table and used instead of table salt every day, all year long.

Herbal Health Pestos

These recipes use fresh herbs, which you can grow in your garden, wildcraft, or purchase in the fresh produce section of your grocery store. Dried herbs aren’t a very good substitute for fresh herbs when it comes to pesto. If you can’t find the herb in the recipe fresh, it’s fine to substitute another herb you like. Almost all culinary herbs, as well as many weeds and medicinal herbs, can be used in pestos in varying quantities.

My favorites herbs include rosemary, sage, basil, oregano, monarda/beebalm, lemon verbena, peppermint/spearmint, nettles, dandelions, sweet clover, chives, marjoram, lovage, parsley, cilantro, fennel, hyssop, rose petals, and citrus/peel.

It’s best to blend very strong-flavored herbs with other milder-tasting herbs when making pestos. For example, bitter dandelion leaves or sage can be combined with chives, parsley, or lemon verbena.

Also, pesto is very flexible, so you can use the ingredients you have on hand. Any nut or seed is fair game, depending on the flavor you want. Toasting the nuts ahead of time gives the pesto a fuller, more interesting taste. Try pumpkin seeds, almonds, walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, or even cashews.

Cheeses are often added to pestos to boost flavor, and though I find these herbal pesto blends to be flavorful enough on their own, you can always try adding different hard or salted cheeses to your liking. Parmesan and Pecorino Romano are traditionally used in pestos, but you can try feta, asiago, or even goat cheese. Leave the cheese out if you are sensitive to dairy or want to support extra-healthy digestive function with your pestos. Serve your pestos over pasta, stirred in rice, or baked on fish, chicken, or potatoes. Or use as a topping for other foods or in homemade salad dressing.

Rosemary, Lemon, and Black Pepper Pesto

This piquant and perky pesto is perfectly delectable on potatoes, chicken, fish, pasta with white beans and summer squash, or stuffed into mushroom tops. Rosemary is a wonderful herbal ally for stimulating the digestion, clarifying the mind, and improving memory. Lemon and rosemary also both gently and effectively detoxify and stimulate healthy liver function.

½ cup toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

2 cloves of garlic

2 cups fresh rosemary leaves, stripped off the stems

1 organic lemon, deseeded, chopped, with the peel

2 teaspoons black pepper, ground

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 cup olive oil

Place pepitas, garlic, and rosemary in a blender or food processor and mince into a paste. Add chopped lemon, spices, and olive oil. Blend again. Serve immediately. Keeps in the fridge for 4–5 days, or freeze for long-term storage.

Fresh Stinging Nettle and Beebalm Pesto

Fresh nettles, available in the spring, grow wild in temperate climates or can be grown in your garden. Nettles are full of minerals like potassium, calcium, and iron, and pack a nutritious punch. Beebalm, or monarda (M. punctata or M. didyma), are lovely garden flowers with brightly colored flowers that attract bees. Beebalm has a spicy and peppery taste much like oregano, but stronger! (Fresh oregano can be used instead if beebalm isn’t available.)

This a wonderful spring tonic to nourish and stimulate the blood, the circulation, and the appetite. Beebalm has the added medicinal benefit of combating infections, so this is a great recipe to use if you have a cold or are recovering from a stomach bug.

3 cups fresh nettle leaves (remove from stems)

1 ½ cups pecans or walnuts

3 cloves garlic

½ cup Parmesan or Romano cheese (optional)

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 cup beebalm leaves and flowers

1 ½–2 cups olive oil

Steam the nettle leaves for 30 to 60 seconds, then rinse immediately with cold water. Mince nuts, garlic, cheese, and salt in the processor until well chopped. Add nettles, beebalm, and olive oil. Pulse until well mixed. Serve over pasta, baked fish or chicken, or potatoes, or mix into sour cream or hummus for a delicious dip.

Dandelion and Chive Pesto

Dandelions are bitter and can be an acquired taste. This pesto mellows out the bitter flavor with snappy chives and lemon juice. Dandelion greens are full of potassium and support healthy liver and kidney function.

This is a perfect spring tonic to get your internal organs perked up, or for any time you want to give your organs a gentle cleanse and boost. Top fresh tomato and mozzarella slices with this dandelion pesto, or use it on baked fish, potatoes, or rice.

2 cups fresh dandelion greens (wild or from the organic produce section)

1 cup chopped chives or scallions

1 ½ cups olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 cloves of garlic

1 cup toasted walnuts or pecans

Salt and pepper to taste

Wash greens and chives, then pulse in the blender with all the ingredients until the mixture forms a smooth pesto consistency.

Lemon, Rose, and Mint Pesto

This delicate and fresh pesto reminds me of Middle Eastern feasts and markets. It has a totally unique flavor, which is best showcased with meals that don’t have conflicting spicy or overwhelming flavors. This is one blend that can be adequately made with dried herbs if fresh aren’t available. I recommend serving this pesto on baked fish or fragrant jasmine rice, or as a topping on hummus, yogurt, pita, cucumber salad, or lentils. This is a very cooling and mild blend of herbs that is perfect for hot summer evenings.

1 cup toasted piñon nuts (toasted almonds are also excellent)

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seed, toasted and ground

1 cup fresh rose petals

1 cup fresh mint leaves

1 cup olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

½ teaspoon salt

Toast nuts, sesame seeds, and cumin seeds. Set aside. Process and blend the nuts/seeds, then add remaining ingredients to the processor/blender. Blend until well incorporated. If you use dried herbs, please rehydrate in ¼ cup boiling stock or water before adding to the processor.

Digestion-Boosting Spice Blends

Spices are well known and used extensively in ethnic cooking. The flavors of India, Morocco, Thailand, China, and even Italy and France are captured by the spices and blends used in the preparation. In North America, our food tends to be bland or heavily focused on one flavor, usually salty or sweet. All the flavors are important for our digestive function, and we are especially missing the bitter and astringent flavors in our food. Spices make our food interesting and enjoyable, and they improve our ability to digest our food properly. When used regularly, spices can ease indigestion, heartburn, or gas. I like to say, “Spice is the variety of life.” If you are not familiar with using varied spices in your cooking, these blends are a perfect place to start, and can be added to food at the table, just like salt or pepper.

These spice blends are meant to be used frequently, even daily, and can be stored for longer periods of time, and made in larger batches to keep on hand. All spice blends are made with culinary herbs, often garlic, black pepper, salt, chives, lemon peels, cumin, chiles, etc. But these recipes have an added boost of medicinal herbs that can stimulate and improve digestion, immune health, energy, and nutrition when used daily in your meals.

It is quite easy to make your own spice blends, using herbs you like. But start off with small batches when creating new blends, so you don’t end up with a large quantity of a blend you don’t like. Try to incorporate spices/herbs that have all of the six flavors (pungent/spicy, bitter, sour, astringent, salty, and sweet). Use a light hand with the spicy, bitter, and salty flavors in your blends, as they can overpower the flavor in large quantities.

I prefer to buy my spices and seeds as whole as possible, and powder them myself in a spice grinder. This preserves the flavor and medicinal benefits much longer than the pre-ground spices, which have been sitting on a shelf or in a cabinet for unknown lengths of time. Try ethnic markets to buy whole spices if you can’t find them at the supermarket, or you can buy them online from herb suppliers like Mountain Rose Herbs or Frontier Herbs.

Za’atar

This is a traditional spice blend from the Middle East that features sumac berries, which is a commonly found weedy shrub/tree in many parts of the United States. You can harvest your own sumac berries in late summer or early fall, or purchase them at Middle Eastern or ethnic markets. I’ve modified the traditional recipe to reflect balance and health in digestion. This spice blend is delicious over hummus, steamed vegetables, rice, salads, or baked fish or chicken.

½ cup sesame seeds, toasted

½ cup oregano leaves, dry

¼ cup nettle leaf, dry

¼ cup rose petals, dry

¼ cup peppermint leaf, dry

1 tablespoon fennel seed

½ cup sumac powder

1 tablespoon aleppo chile (or red chile flakes)

2 teaspoons sea salt

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet and cool. Mix all the dry herbs and grind briefly in a spice grinder. Don’t powder them completely, just break them up and incorporate them evenly. Grind salt and toasted sesame seeds together. Blend all ingredients and store in an airtight shaker or jar.

Earth and Sea Zingy Blend

This spice blend is a nourishing topping for all kinds of foods, and boosts the mineral and vitamin content of whatever you sprinkle it on. It uses herbal ingredients from both land and sea. The herbs included also are considered adaptogens and help the body handle stress better, boost immune health, and improve energy.

½ cup toasted nori flakes

1 tablespoon dulse flakes

½ cup nettle leaf

1 tablespoon black pepper, ground

1 tablespoon schizandra berry, ground

2 tablespoons dried shiitake mushroom, ground

Grind all ingredients finely in a spice grinder. Mix together and shake abundantly for a burst of flavor, mineral nutrition,and an energy boost.

Six-Flavor Churna

In Ayurveda, the traditional healing system of India, it is said that there are six flavors: bitter, sour, salty, pungent, astringent, and sweet. We need all six flavors in every meal and every day to be fully satisfied and nourished and to digest our food properly. Churnas are often made with herbs and spices to improve digestion, and add the flavors missing from prepared foods. This is my version, which contains all six flavors in a tasty balance. Sprinkle this on all your meals in small quantities to improve digestion.

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon rose petal powder

1 teaspoon ginger root powder

½ teaspoon licorice root powder

1 teaspoon rosehip powder

½ teaspoon dandelion root powder

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight shaker or jar. You can powder your own herbs in a spice grinder if you do not have powdered herbs on hand.

Darcey Blue French is a shamanic and clinical herbalist and wildcrafter of plant medicines. She calls herself a devotee of all that is sacred on this wild, beautiful earth. She learns from the plants and listens for the quiet, intuitive knowing of a plant communicating to her its love, its medicine, its nature enveloped and rooted in the magic of the natural world—the place where the heart hears what is being said. She is here to dive deep into the wild world and to experience, to sense, to taste, to feel the magic of the plants and the wisdom of spirit within each of us. Darcey lives and works in the southwestern deserts and mountains of Tucson, Arizona, where she maintains her private healing practice and offers an Herbal Medicine CSA, a shamanic herbal apprenticeship, medicinal plant walks, and plant medicine retreats. She was trained in clinical herbalism/nutrition at the North American Institute for Medical Herbalism. Visit Darcey online at www.shamanaflora.com.