Alien Ingredient #26: Khao Thong

On another quick trip to the market to grab a couple of things for the restaurant, I saw a new addition to the line up of Asian herbs. At first, I mistook this herb for sweet potato vines, which I have worked with many times in the past. But on closer inspection, it clearly wasn't sweet potatoes and it was labelled Kha Thong. Google didn't help, which led me to believe that there was a typo in the name somewhere.

It took me a few minutes of puzzling to figure that this was some kind of bastardized Thai name, but fortunately before I could spend too much time digging into the name or running it across the street to the Thai restaurant, a customer put me on the right track. [Tran Huong-Thu, thank you!]

I now see that I was looking for khao thong, or more properly, phak khao thong, aka Houttuynia cordata. English names are heartleaf and fishwort. It was described thus: "The shoots and young leaves of khao thong have a strong fish-like smell with a hint of lemon. They are eaten raw with jeo or laap, giving a slightly bitter flavour." And, "has an unusual taste that is often described as fishy (earning it the nickname "fish mint"), so it is not enjoyed as universally as basil, mint, or other more commonly used herbs."

Yeah, well Tony and I hadn't read this before we chowed down on a leaf and spit it out immediately. We have decided that there is a more fitting name for this plant: Ass Plant.

Vote: Ass Plant says it all. We have already been there and you have been warned. No need to go there yourself.

Alien Ingredient #25: Ngò om/Rice Paddy Herb

Here's another Vietnamese herb about which I have read much but never worked with before, the so-called rice paddy herb, a name that fittingly describes its preference for hot and wet growing conditions.

On tasting it, it presents a bright lemony, sweet, somewhat cumin-like flavor. In fact, it very much reminds me of shiso/perilla and I would use it in situations where I would use shiso. Which is a sneaky way of saying I wouldn't use it at all, not being a big fan of shiso. [When I say I'm not a fan, I'm not saying I won't eat it, because I will eat just about anything, but I am saying that there is no compelling reason for me to ever seek it out again.]

Vote: If you like shiso, you'll like ngò om. Me, I could do without shiso and I can do without rice paddy herb.

Alien Ingredient #24: Kinh Giới

This is a fun herb that I have never heard of before. At first, I mistook it for Lemon Balm, an herb that we grow here at the restaurant for its wonderful lemon flavor. With its square hairy stems, this mint (Elsholtzia ciliata) differs only in very slight ways from lemon balm. Tasting it, the flavor is slightly different too. It reminds me more of lemon zest than lemon balm does. Lemon balm has a slightly more lemongrass/citronella flavor. Of all the lemon-flavored herbs, this Vietnamese Lemon Balm is the closest imitator of lemon zest. It really is quite good and I look forward to converting this to a sorbet or granita for our tasting menus this week.

Vote: An herbal dead ringer for lemon zest. Excellent!

Postscript April 14, 2012. Kinh Giới has found a place on our appetizer menu in our Shrimp, Lemon, and Vietnamese Lemon Balm Risotto. It is proving to be quite a useful herb.

Alien Ingredient #23: Rau Răm

After years of reading in my Vietnamese cookbooks about this magical herb called rau răm (Persicaria odorata), I finally stumbled across some at the market. Excitedly, I brought some of this herb that is also called Vietnamese Coriander back to the restaurant. You can tell from the Latin odorata and the common name coriander that this should be a fragrant herb à la cilantro or Thai basil. And according to my texts, rau răm is used as a fresh herb, often as a garnish, just as are cilantro and basil.

I have rarely been more underwhelmed by an herb in my entire life. I crushed a leaf and it smelled of nothing but crushed green leaf. I tasted it and it was totally blah, just like chickweed. Nothing but a vegetal chlorophyll flavor.

I'll try again if I ever see it again, but this was a total waste of time and money.

Vote: What is the point?

Alien Ingredient #4: Epazote

"Looks like a Chenopodium, doesn't it?" I asked myself when I bought this bunch of epazote the other day because it sure looks like one of the herbs in that family, like the lambsquarters (C. album) that we have growing all over the back yard.

Funny that I should think that. It turns out that epazote was until recently classified by taxonomists as a Chenopodium, the same family that contains quinoa (C. quinoa). This native of southern Mexico, Central America, and South America has been moved from C. ambrosioides to Dysphania ambrosioides, for the one of you who actually cares about this kind of stuff.

I've long known of epazote, principally from reading in my Mexican Spanish-language cookbooks and in the Foods of Mexico by Diana Kennedy. I've also heard that it grows as a weed around these parts, but I have never encountered it growing in the wild in any of my foraging expeditions.

Epazote has been available for years from my produce company, but their price for it has always been prohibitive. And I have seen lots of dried epazote at various tiendas about town, but when I try a new herb, I want to try it fresh. Now that Food Maxx has big bunches of it for cheap, I brought this big bundle to the restaurant to check out.

It's a strong herb for sure, reeking to heaven of shoe polish, kerosene, and other scents that would warn most humans not to eat the stuff. The word "noxious" comes to mind. The taste of the raw leaf is a lot milder and not all that offensive. Blanched in water, the medicinal and industrial flavor comes right back. Sautéeing it doesn't help either. It is clear that a little bit goes a long way. And I read that the younger leaves are less potent than the older. The presence of panicles of flowers on this bunch would argue that this is pretty mature epazote.

Traditionally, it is used for its carminative (anti-flatulent) effect when cooking black beans. I will certainly add epazote to my beans in the future to see how it changes the flavor, but I don't have high hopes for it. I suspect that it is one of those things that you either grow up eating or you don't eat at all.

Vote: Mom, do I really have to finish all my epazote?

Alien Ingredient #3: Culantro

It's not exactly accurate that I've never used culantro before; many years ago, a local farmer brought me three tiny leaves to play with, leaves that were much smaller than these. He was trying to grow it for me, but apparently, the herb is very tough to germinate and doesn't really care for our climate here in Virginia. Nonetheless, I wanted the guys on the crew to play with this cilantro-flavored herb from Mexico and Central America that often goes by its Puerto Rican name, recao. I've also heard it called sawtooth herb, a name that it comes by quite naturally as you can see in the photo.

Culantro and cilantro are almost interchangeable in cooking, but culantro is more pungent. I like culantro for cooked applications because the leaf is a lot sturdier. It is especially at home in the sofrito (seasoning base) called recaíto that is the basis for a lot of Caribbean and Central American dishes.

The rest of this bunch went into the various dishes for which we use cilantro.

Vote: As long as culantro is a lot more expensive than cilantro, we'll keep on using cilantro.

Harbinger

From the flower pot on our deck, the first chives of the season, a fitting photo for the first day of March.

Basil

If you're a long time reader or good customer at the restaurant, you won't find it very surprising that I have a hard time with recipes and trying to record art as a scientific process. A case in point. What exactly do you use when a recipe calls for something as straightforward as basil?

At first glance, basil is basil, no? Well, no, not really. For example, this summer, we have had at least 9 or 10 different cultivars of basil to play with in our kitchen. Each has a unique flavor that bears experimenting with. Here is a photo of a few organic basils that came in last week, from bottom left, clockwise, ending in the center (click on photo to see labels): Thai basil, Genovese basil, Globe basil, Holy basil, and Opal basil.

Now, don't go burning your cookbooks because of this post: almost all basils are interchangeable. Go to a farmers market and try some different ones!

Summerlong Basil

I'm completely taken with a new basil cultivar called Summerlong which you see to the right. Some plants have the micro leaves that you see here while others have slightly larger leaves. The cultivar is a very compact globe or bush basil that is slow to bloom. If you've ever grown basil, you know that once it blooms, it's not nearly as good as before. The smell and flavor is outstanding. The tiny leaves can be tedious to work with, but I'm still taken with this basil, and the tiny leaves are a bonus for us in the restaurant where we need tiny leaves for garnish. Try some in your garden next year. Ed likes this.

Water Pepper

You see here some micro Water Pepper (Persicaria hydropiper) that we recently received to experiment with. As microgreens go, its handsome green leaves with pink undersides and pink stems look great on the plate.

Water Pepper is known for its wasabi-like spice. The grower that I bought it from went on and on about how spicy it is, but we never found it to be overly spicy. Maybe these micros are just too young to have developed killer spice. Eating a few of the leaves is akin to taking a bite of prepared "wasabi" powder. Wasabi is in quotes because wasabi powder contains no actual wasabi, but that's the subject of another post, once I get some fresh wasabi root to photograph.

I notice that the leaves have a slight bitter cast on the initial taste, followed by the spice, which lingers and reminds me of Sichuan pepper. What's a bit weird is that it doesn't have any real flavor of its own, just slight bitterness followed by the burn.

I enjoyed it as a replacement for wasabi with tuna sashimi, wrapped into tekka rolls, and in summer rolls. I also mixed a bit into my local mesclun for my personal lunch salads. Water pepper retains its spice when cooked (I put a batch of wilted leaves into a quick salsa), but I'm not sure why you'd cook with such an expensive green.

Note to chefs: this micro does not last long. It wilts in a hurry. You must store it cold and tightly covered, so you can't keep it in the top of your garnish box, even with a loose fitting lid. That's a bit of a pain at service, but so it goes.

Kaffir Lime

The Kaffir Lime (Citrus x hystrix) also known by the Thai name makrut is one of the glories of the food world. A kaffir lime is roughly the same size as the common lime, but is easily distinguishable by its bumpy surface, like that of a Seville orange, or in some cultivars, a really warty surface. The rind is highly aromatic and is a common flavor component of many curry pastes.

Maybe I'll get into curry pastes in another post (or series of posts: it's a subject that deserves its own book) but here I want to focus on the true gems of this tree, the leaves, which are known as bai makrut in Thai. And it is the distinctive doubled leaves that are used more often than the fruit.

Once you have smelled the addictive floral citrus aroma of kaffir lime leaves, I promise that you'll be hooked. And you'll know immediately that there is no substitute on this earth for these leaves. Trust me, I've tried every substitute under the sun for them and nothing can come close to that haunting citrus perfume.

I hooked several guests at a tasting last evening when I served pan-roasted halibut on a quenelle of beluga lentils with a highly scented broth poured over it. I cooked the lentils in broth infused with kaffir lime, ginger, lemongrass, and garlic; then drained the broth and reduced it again with more of the same aromatics, then a third time with coconut milk. I used the highly reduced coconut milk to bind the belugas into which I mixed more fresh aromatics. Separately, I made a fumet of halibut scraps, shiitake stock, and more of the same aromatics. After infusing the aromatics, I removed them, reduced the fumet to 1/4 volume and clarified it twice. Before pouring it over the fish, I scattered very fine threads of kaffir lime over the soup bowl. When the hot fumet hit the lime threads, the entire dining room was perfumed.

So haunting was the dish that customers wanted to know all about it and we played show-and-tell with the lime leaves in the dining room. Naturally, all the cooks at the table wanted to know where and how to get them.

Fortunately, kaffir limes are being grown in small quantities in the US, so they are readily available on the market, if rather expensive. Wholesale, a pound of leaves—a small mountain—approaches US$50. You can buy them retail in small quantities via Priority Mail from importfood.com. I did a lot of business with them years ago before the restaurant and they are an extremely reliable small family business. Sorry, UK readers (we have a ton of fans in the UK), I have no clue how you go about getting these gems.

A pound of leaves is a lot, enough to jam a gallon-sized freezer bag, and way more than we can possibly use before they go bad. But fear not, they freeze well. Although they lose their bright color in the freezer, the flavor still goes strong up to a year later. And, no need to defrost the leaves to use them; use straight out of the freezer.

A final word about how to use the leaves. I often use them just like bay leaves, to flavor stocks and soups. I mince them and then pound them in the mortar as part of curry pastes, and very frequently, I cut the central rib out of the leaves, stack them, and chiffonade them into very fine threads which I scatter on dishes at the very last moment.

Burning Questions: Herbs

This whole series of "Burning Questions" posts originated as a somewhat amusing troll through the One Block West Restaurant web site server logs, to see what search phrases were bringing people to the web site. As I went through the logs, the search topics seemed to fall into several broad categories, each dealt with in a separate post in this series. This post deals with herbs.

Poultry Herbs. Each vendor has its own special mix, but each is almost certain to contain a lot of sage and thyme. Many contain some rosemary and marjoram. Me, I use what I have on hand.

Do You Use the [Basil] Stem When Making Pesto? Yes, I use the tender stems. No, I don't use the woody stems.

Can I Make Pesto with Vegetable Oil? Sure you can, but unless you have an olive allergy, why would you? Pesto is rightfully made with extra virgin olive oil and I think it is available at just about every store in the United States.

One Head of Dill Equals. The term head refers to one of the blooming umbels of the dill plant. At the early stages, it will have flowers. At the middle stages, it will have green seeds. At full maturity, it will have mature, brown dill seeds. Most recipes I've seen, when calling for a head of dill, mean an umbel with mature seeds. I'd say that's about quarter to a half a teaspoon of dill seeds.

Can I Mix Rosemary, Basil, and Sage? Why not? I do it all the time in my bouquets garnis for ossobuco.

Cilantro Direct Sun Heat. Cilantro loves direct sun and hates a lot of heat. Heat causes it to bolt, that is, to send up a bloom spike and go to seed. This means that you should plant it in the spring and fall. In the summer, you might be able to get away with it in a location which receives morning or afternoon sun, but is shaded during the hottest part of the day.

How to Plant Rosemary in Virginia. With a trowel! But seriously, get a cold-tolerant cultivar such as Arp from your garden center. Plant it in a warm, sunny location protected from northerly and westerly winds. In the fall, wrap it in straw and burlap and pray like hell. Or grow it as a potted plant and bring it in in the winter. I can never get it to grow indoors.

Stripping Thyme Leaves. Hold the base of the thyme branch between the thumb and forefinger of one hand and use the thumb and forefinger of the other hand to strip the leaves off towards the tip in a single motion. The stem may break near the tip where it is tender so you may want to mince the thyme with a knife.

Differences Between Italian Parsley and Cilantro. Visually, you can see that cilantro on the left has rounder lobes than Italian parsley on the right with its more pointed lobes. Generally, you cannot substitute one for the other: they have vastly different flavors, but you should never need to because they're both available in most grocery stores. If you are confused about them at the market, crush a leaf of each and smell them.

Fines Herbes

Why a post defining something that you can just look up in Wikipedia? Because I am not satisfied with any definition that I can find. The classic French herb mixture called fines herbes ("feen zairb") is not something that can be fully defined as a short list of four herbs, finely minced. And far too many so-called references on the web and in print, including scholarly dictionaries, rush to give their idea of which four herbs comprise fines herbes and many of these authorities' lists are at odds with each other.

What these lists fail to address is the spirit behind fines herbes. Fines herbes are those herbs that in traditional French cooking pair well with seafood, poultry, and other delicately flavored dishes. These are herbs that are finely minced and added at the last minute before service to add both grace and a lightness (I particularly like the French words for this concept: légèreté, délicatesse, grâce).

Years ago as a young man, like the current experts, I used to be certain what the correct four herbs were; however, the older I get, the more things tend to gray, not only my hair. In reality, each chef has a preferred number, combination, and ratio of fines herbes. Although four herbs are traditional, some chefs use more and some use less. Herbs that are more or less traditional are parsley, chervil, chives, tarragon, thyme, dill, and other similar (that is, delicately flavored) herbs.

My favorite combination is parsley, chervil, chives, and very young dill, in equal proportion. I think that chervil gives enough anise flavor to the mix without adding the oft heavy handed tarragon. [Aside: tarragon never was on my list of "delicate" herbs—it is a culinary beast capable of slaying many dishes.] Very young dill is just the ticket for me. But naturally my mix varies depending on what I am cooking, what herbs I have on hand, and what season it is.

What you can infer from my list above is that assertive herbs such as rosemary and oregano do not belong in fines herbes, nor does cilantro which is highly alien in classic French cuisine. Could lemon balm or lemon verbena be a part of my fines herbes mix? That's a definite yes. What about bay? No, it's very pungent. Basil, no, I think not.

I hope you are starting to recognize the picture that I am trying to draw for you. Fines herbes is about fresh, tender, delicately flavored herbs that work well with mild dishes such as poultry, seafood, eggs, clear or cream soups, and salads, added at just the last moment for a touch of freshness and lightness. You would be served well to remember this and forget about the canonical list, which does not exist and probably never did.

Cooking with Herbs

[Here's another article that I have migrated from oneblockwest.com.]

Here are some recipes and notes from a demonstration of cooking with herbs at Blandy Farm, the State Arboretum of Virginia, on Sunday October 10, 2004, a gorgeous fall day in a most beautiful location in Clarke County. Thank you to the volunteers at Blandy for all their help. I had a wonderful time and the audience was super, asking questions, tasting dishes, and tasting the herbs.

When I was asked to do this demonstration, I knew that on one hand, it would not be difficult for me to find dishes to do because cooking with fresh herbs is one of the key differences between restaurant and home cooking. But, on the other hand, it would be terribly difficult to pick just a few dishes to do, because most of our dishes involve fresh herbs. I tried to pick dishes that span a wide spectrum of cuisines and techniques.

I also need to preface this article by saying that these recipes are just guidelines, written after the demonstration. Those of you present know that I measured absolutely nothing. Here then are the dishes.

Veal Medallions with Prosciutto and Sage
Grilled Herb-Marinated Pork Tenderloin
Lemon-Dill Risotto
Thai Fried Rice with Roasted Pork
Corvina in Warm Vinaigrette aux Fines Herbes
Apples with Thyme and Honey

Veal Medallions with Prosciutto and Sage

I don’t really expect that you have access to good veal. If you do, good for you. If you don’t, use pork tenderloin, turkey, or chicken medallions. Also, you may not be able to make your own demiglace or have access to commercial demiglace. For a substitute, use a bit of any meat broth.

8 ounces veal tenderloin
Wondra or plain flour
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
salt and pepper
4-5 leaves of sage, finely sliced
2 slices prosciutto
2 teaspoons veal demiglace
splash of water

Slice the veal into medallions. Heat a sauté pan over high heat and film with vegetable oil. Dredge the veal in Wondra and shake off the excess. Place in the pan and cook for a minute. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add the sage and prosciutto. Turn the medallions and after 30 seconds, add the demiglace, stirring to melt. If the sauce is not liquid enough, add a splash of water. Remove the meat to hot plates and pour the sauce over.

If using meat broth rather than demiglace, after the medallions have cooked, remove them from the pan and keep warm. Continue reducing your sauce over high heat until it is a thick as you want it.

Grilled Herb-Marinated Pork Tenderloin

Although I cut the pork tenderloin into medallions and then marinated them at the demo, that was because I didn’t have a grill. This recipe was designed for grilling whole marinated pork tenderloins.

This is one of those freeform recipes in that it really doesn’t matter what herbs you use in the marinade. At the restaurant, we use whatever we happen to have on hand. Whatever mix we make, it is generally half parsley. We use assertive herbs such as rosemary and sage sparingly. There can never be enough garlic. We avoid licorice tasting herbs such as tarragon and chervil. I don’t think cilantro has any place in this recipe; you may disagree.

The mix I made at the demonstration consisted of parsley, thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, and chives.

1 or more pork tenderloins
1 cup assorted minced fresh herbs per tenderloin
black pepper
garlic, minced, one head per tenderloin
extra virgin olive oil
salt

Mince the herbs and garlic. Add them along with black pepper and enough olive oil to form a fluid paste to a seal top plastic bag. Remove the silverskin from the tenderloins. Place the tenderloins in the bag and massage the herb paste all around them. Place in the refrigerator overnight or longer.

Grill on medium high heat, turning the tenderloin twice (they have essentially three sides), until done. Do not overcook. Medium to medium well is a good stopping point.

Lemon-Dill Risotto

This is a wonderfully subtle risotto that I use as a base for seafood, especially our house specialty caramelized scallops. Risotti are very easy to make, provided that you start with the correct Italian shortgrained rice. We use Arborio at the restaurant, but Carnaroli and Vialone Nano are just as good.

The canonical recipe for risotto is half a diced onion, 2 cups of rice, 1 cup of white wine, and 6 cups or more of other liquid. From here, it is merely theme and variation.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 yellow onion, finely diced
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup dry white wine
6 cups warm water (or vegetable broth or seafood stock or chicken stock)
1 pinch saffron
2 tablespoons chopped dill
zest of half a lemon
2 tablespoons grated cheese (Romano, Parmigiano, or any other grana)
2 tablespoons butter
salt

Heat a pan over medium heat and add the oil and the onion. Cook the onion until it turns translucent, then add the rice, stir it to coat with the oil, and cook until the edges of the rice become translucent.

Add the wine and let it all but evaporate. Add enough liquid to barely cover the rice and adjust the flame so that the rice is barely boiling. Add the saffron. As the liquid is absorbed into the rice, add more liquid by the ladleful until the rice is cooked to your liking. Stir frequently to keep from sticking. We stop cooking the rice when the center is just cooked through, about 20 minutes or so.

When the rice is just done, stir in the dill, lemon zest, cheese, and butter. If the rice is not a fluid consistency, add a bit more liquid. Stir very well to incorporate all the ingredients. Taste for salt after adding the cheese, which has a lot of salt. Serve immediately.

Thai Fried Rice with Roasted Pork

Here’s a dish that shows off some non-Western European herbs that are very simple to grow at home: cilantro and Thai basil. No two batches are the same because this is another clean out the refrigerator dish.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon essential fried rice paste
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 cup each of various ingredients (diced carrots, green onions, cherry tomatoes, roasted pork, etc.)
3 cups cold long-grained rice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
1/2 cup Thai basil leaves

Heat a large sauté pan over high heat and then add the oil. Then add the paste and black pepper. Stir well and cook for a minute or so. Then add any raw ingredients that you want to cook (such as carrots). When they are cooked, add the rice and any ingredients that just need to be warmed. Stir well. Add fish sauce to taste. When done, stir in the fresh herbs off the heat and serve immediately.

The white and black pepper kick in a surprising amount of heat. Should you want more, make some nam prik, sliced Thai bird chiles in fish sauce, to spoon over according to your tolerance for heat.

Essential Fried Rice Paste. Many Thai dishes start with a paste fried in oil and this dish is no different. The pastes are made in large granite mortars with heavy pestles. I use one at home. At the restaurant, we use the huge Vita-Prep which will liquefy anything in seconds. At your house, do your best with what you’ve got, although a household blender or food processor isn’t going to do a great job.

1 bunch cilantro, preferably with roots
1 bunch Thai basil
3 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 T white peppercorns (or 1 T ground white pepper)

Remove the stems and roots from the cilantro and Thai basil and roughly chop. Reserve the leaves (for the fried rice recipe above, for example). Pound all the ingredients to a paste in a mortar, or do the best that you can with a blender (in which case, start with ground pepper). If you need to add liquid to get the blender to work, add vegetable oil.

Corvina with Warm Vinaigrette aux Fines Herbes

I love to make fish this way: sautéed and finished with a vinaigrette. I actually came up with this idea during the middle of another demo. But, there’s nothing original in the cooking universe. A quick search of the Internet shows that this has been done time and time again by countless chefs. Here’s my take.

Corvina is a lovely small-flaked sweet white fish in the drum family, the same family that includes grouper and croaker. Customers seem to prefer corvine to grouper. Substitute any white or non-oily fish that you like. I would stay away from salmon and char, however.

Fines Herbes is a classic French combination, traditionally of four herbs. Years ago, I used to be certain what the correct four herbs were; however, the older I get, the more things tend to gray, not only my hair. Each chef has a preferred combination of fines herbes. Herbs that are more or less traditional are parsley, chervil, chives, tarragon, and perhaps dill. My combination is parsley, chervil, chives, and dill, in equal proportion.

1 tablespoon vinegar (rice, white wine, sherry)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (pure olive, soy, canola, grapeseed)
2 tablespoons minced fines herbes
salt
2-4 fish fillets

Mix your vinaigrette by whisking the vinegar, oil, herbs, and salt to taste. Sauté the fish fillets until they are done. Pour over the vinaigrette and cook for 30-45 seconds. Serve immediately.

Apples with Thyme and Honey

I just wanted to show that apples respond well to savory seasonings. Think about all those German and Alsatian dishes of apples with caraway and/or juniper berries. Thyme is probably my favorite herb and would always be number one on the list of the five herbs I could take with me to a desert isle. I’m not going to give quantities here—they really don’t matter.

Key here is the quality of the apples. I used Blushing Goldens because they are one of the finest cooking and eating apples that I know. Look for a crisp apple with good flavor and excellent acidity. Hint: go to a farmer’s market. You are not going to find such an apple at the supermarket.

When we cannot get wild local honey (winter), we use honey from Virginia Honey in Berryville. Remember to shop locally.

butter
apples, in slices
fresh thyme
salt
honey

Melt the butter in a sauté pan and brown the apple slices. Add fresh thyme, salt, and honey to taste.

An Herb Primer

Here are notes on the herbs that we use most often at the restaurant.

Basil

Most of the culinary basils have some mint, licorice, or cinnamon flavor components. Each basil varies in flavor, but they are all wonderful. Basil and tomatoes are forever joined in my cooking vocabulary. I don’t understand one without the other. Basil is always included in my herb marinades. Basil is generally cut in ribbons (called a chiffonade) or chopped. It grows easily from seed once the ground warms up. Pinch it back liberally to keep it from blooming. See also Thai basil.

Chervil

A tender herb with delicate fernlike leaves and a slight licorice flavor, chervil does not tolerate heat, so we use it most in spring and in the fall. Chervil is a classic component of fines herbes and works very well with fish and poultry. Chervil is generally plucked from the stems. I love to steam salmon with chervil and if I have it in stock, chervil goes into our herb mayonnaise for fish. Sow early and late in the season in not too direct sunlight. I find it works great on the back side of my pea trellis.

Chives

Chives are a workhorse for me, always featuring in my herb marinades. I love them for their delicate onion flavor and beautiful blue-green color. Also a classic component of fines herbes, chives are usually sliced into thin rings. I often use them to bring a bit of color to light colored foods. Once established, chives are care free and easily self-seeding (to the point of being a pest!). Even if you only have a coffee can on the windowsill, you should have some chives. We also use the blossoms for garnish and I often shred the blossoms into omelettes.

Cilantro

Nothing screams “Fresh!” to me like cilantro (whose seeds are called coriander). The most commonly used fresh herb in the world, cilantro (also known by its Hindi name Dhania) features in all my Latino cooking, in Indian chutneys (dhania chatni, for example), and as a primary flavoring ingredient in salsas. Salsa and cilantro are so linked in my culinary vocabulary that if I did not have fresh cilantro on hand, I probably would not make salsa. Use sparingly as cilantro has a pronounced flavor and be aware that as much as ten percent of the population finds cilantro disgustingly soapy tasting (this is believed to be a genetic issue). Cilantro is most often plucked from the stems and chopped or used whole as garnish. Cilantro does not tolerate heat well, so grow in the early and late seasons. Grows trivially from seeds.

Dill

Dill is a favorite herb. When I think dill, I think cucumbers, sour cream, and salmon. An inoffensive herb, dill can be used in fairly large quantities. It is especially good with eggs, fish, and poultry. Dill is plucked from the stems and optionally chopped. Readily sown from seed, dill reseeds without any effort on your part.

Garlic Chives

Garlic chives are an onion relative with bright green, flat leaves with a pronounced garlic flavor. I use them in generic herb marinades and also any time that I want garlic flavor plus bright green coloring. They are a classic in the chicken mousse that is stuffed into Chinese dumplings. Garlic chives are generally sliced into thin rings as are chives. I always add them to my herb marinades because I have them everywhere now. I never had any success germinating them from seed, but I was able to buy a small pot at a greenhouse and divide it about 12 ways. Now that I have them growing, they self-seed like crazy to the point of being weeds. Go figure.

Lavender

Lavender is not much used as a culinary herb in the US, but it is often found in herbes de Provence from the south of France. The leaves are slightly musty as is sage, so I use them sparingly in herb mixes and chop them very fine. The blooms I sometimes steep in cream to flavor desserts.

Lemongrass

Lemongrass is a grass that grows in clumps and has a delicate citronella flavor that is very difficult to mimic with other lemon flavorings. Easy to grow, but very tender, lemongrass wants heat and moisture. Harvest individual stalks from the outside of the clump and strip away any of tough outer leaves. Cut off the top of the stalk about five inches above the roots and discard the tops. Slice the cream colored lower part of the stalk into rings for marinades and chop the rings finely if you are using the lemongrass in a finished dish. At first frost, harvest all your lemongrass and freeze it. You can try to bring it inside, but I have never had any luck at this.

Lemon Verbena

We grow this tender herb in pots outside the restaurant door. It has a wonderfully intense lemon flavor and even more pronounced fragrance. I use it in herb marinades and for garnishes, but mostly for flavoring desserts such as panna cotta.

Oregano/Marjoram

There are many, many kinds of oreganos and marjorams on the market and they all vary slightly in flavor. The flavor is very assertive, so use a light hand with this herb. Strip the leaves from the stems and chop finely. I mostly use oregano in flavoring Greek dishes and in general herb mixes. I do not like oregano in tomato sauces. It reminds me too much of crappy pizza sauce.

Parsley

I think we’re all familiar with parsley and its bright flavor. We only use flat leaf parsley at the restaurant. Not only is it easier to chop, but it has more flavor than curly parsley. Although it is a biennial, it is pretty useless in its second year—all its effort is going into bolting. Replant every spring.

Rosemary

Rosemary is a classic Mediterranean herb and a natural with lamb and in meat sauces. I love to roast chickens and potatoes with rosemary. It’s a very assertive herb, so use it sparingly. Depending on what I want to do, I either include whole sprigs in bouquets garnis, strip the leaves, or strip the leaves and chop them very fine. If you’re lucky, you can grow rosemary in our climate. There are two cultivars that can tolerate some cold, Arp and Alba. Arp has much better flavor than Alba. Over a period of years, I was able to select a strain of Arp that consistently wintered over for me (on a southwest-facing wall) and ultimately got four bushes to be about five feet tall. Then we remodeled the house and the bulldozer got them before I could move them. A sad day that was.

Sage

Sage is one of the classic Southern poultry herbs along with thyme. Sage features prominently in my poultry dressings, in dirty rice, in my Southern style sausage, and I stuff it into the cavities of chickens that I roast. Sometimes I put whole sage leaves under the skin of chickens to be roasted. Sage is also prominent in Northern Italian cooking and I love it with veal and in white beans. Sage is one of the few herbs that I like better dried than fresh. I generally chop the fresh leaves fairly fine.

Tarragon

Tarragon is another of the classic fines herbes from France. It goes well with both poultry and fish and is a key flavoring ingredient in sauce tartare and in sauce Béarnaise (which I detest). An assertive herb with a definite licorice flavor, tarragon wants to be used sparingly. Strip the leaves from the stems and chop finely.

Thai Basil

One of my darling herbs, Thai basil tastes to me like a cross between mint and black pepper. What a fun flavor profile! An indispensable garnish for many Thai dishes, Thai basil is easy to grow from seed, once the soil gets warm. Strip the leaves as for any other basil. Since the leaves tend to be very small, I often leave them whole. Thai basil is a catchall name for a variety of basils, most of which have purple stems and small dark green leaves.

Thyme

Were I asked to choose five flavorings to bring to a deserted island, the first four are no contest: salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic. I like thyme so much that I cannot think of cooking without it. And it is the one herb I can count on year round. It’s always in the garden, even under the snow. Thyme is one of the quintessential poultry herbs and I rarely roast a chicken without a healthy sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves and a bunch of sprigs stuffed into the body cavity. Thyme leaves are easily stripped from the stalks by pulling from the root end to the tip. There are scads of cultivars, each with its own flavor. Plant a bunch and try them out. My all-time favorite was a variegated thyme (lemon yellow margins on dark green leaves). Sadly, it died without me being able to divide it. I don’t use dried thyme. It can be really strong and bitter.

Chiffonade

I confused a couple of people by using the French word chiffonade during my demo at Blandy Farm last weekend when talking about basil. Despite the ubiquity of food shows on TV, I guess this is a technical term that many people aren't familiar with. Chiffonade, from the verb chiffonner, to (c)rumple, is a wonderfully concise way of saying "sliced into very fine shreds."

The following photos demonstrate the technique with basil. Photography by daughter number two.

Stack the leaves one on another.

Roll the leaves tightly.

This is what you're aiming for.

Slice into shreds as fine as you like. I do kaffir limes leaves microfine, less than a millimeter across. This basil is fairly coarse, for pasta.

This is the finished product, which ended up in pasta sauce of braised yellow and red peppers, leeks, and onions, roasted skate, and roasted tomatoes for staff meals last night.

Garlic Scapes

A friend who lives right next to the restaurant raises garlic on a little plot here in town. And every year when his garlic starts sending up bloom shoots called scapes (photo, at right), he cuts them off brings them to me.

If you leave the scape on the garlic plant, it will put its energy into the scape, which will straighten out over time and produce tiny seed-like bulbs. If you cut the scape, the plant puts its energy into growing the bulb, the part that most of us like to eat.

But to eat only the mature bulb is to miss two other very edible stages of the plant: green garlic and scapes. I should mention that there are two kinds of garlic in the world, softnecks which do not produce scapes and hardnecks (including rocamboles) which do produce scapes.

The curly scapes are tender with a mild garlic flavor. I dice them and make risotto from them, slice them and stir fry them, cut the blooms out and use them as another vegetable in mixed vegetable sautés, add them to the myriad green sauces that I make, and so forth and so on.

If you're lucky enough to grow your own hardneck garlic or know someone who does, by all means, avail yourself of this spring bounty.

A Mojito Spring

“Mojito: the Official Drink of One Block West Staff. Hey, you ought to put this on the blog.”—Anonymous One Block West Server

I was outside last night trying to knock some of the aphids off the roses when it struck me how gigantic and lush our spearmint is. But then, it should be. We've had a wet (16 to 20 inches of rain since April 1 according to NWS) and cool spring, ideal growing conditions for mint. Seattle, take that!

Just for grins, here's a shot of the top of a typical plant, showing the size in relation to my hand. Huge!

Besides using this bounty as garnish for desserts, we've used it in Mint Pesto for the lamb and Mojito Crème Brûlée, apparently named after our drink of choice and flavored with rum, mint, lime zest, and brown sugar. But to be fair, most of the mint has gone into Mojitos after hours. [Am I alone in thinking that those Kentuckians are wasting both good Bourbon and good mint in their juleps?]

One Block West Mojito

The following recipe is for one drink. Are you serious? Who makes one Mojito?

8-10 mint leaves
1/4 lime, sliced lengthwise and crosswise
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1/2 ounce simple syrup
2 ounces Bacardi light rum
club soda
1 sprig of mint
slice of lime

Put the mint leaves and lime pieces into a tall glass, squeeze the 1/2 lime over that, and sprinkle in the sugar. Muddle well. Add the simple syrup and Bacardi. Stir well. Taste and adjust by adding more simple syrup or lime juice as necessary.

Fill with crushed ice and top with club soda. Garnish with a mint sprig and a lime wedge. Enjoy!

Today's Word is....Charmoula

I was glancing through an old edition of Food Arts this morning when I saw a reference to lamb with charmoula. In recent days, we've touched on chimichurri (and incidentally on its Italian cousin salsa verde), so why not keep going on the theme of green condiment sauces?

Charmoula, often transliterated from Arabic as chermoula, is the green sauce from northern Africa: Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. The basic theme is a lot of cilantro, a little parsley (3:1 ratio), olive oil, lemon juice, a bit of garlic, and that's about where the commonality in recipes ceases.

Each cook adds his or her own touches to personalize the sauce: ras al hanout, cumin, green chiles, cayenne pepper or paprika, onion, lemon zest or preserved lemon, and so forth. Ras al hanout is another can of worms: it's a blend of many spices such as cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, paprika, cayenne, black pepper and so forth and so on ad nauseum. You think charmoula recipes vary? You should get into a "discussion" someday about the definitive ras al hanout mixture!

This whole thread reminds me that I bought some gorgeous cilantro at the farmers market this morning to accompany my dinner special: Huachinango en Mojo de Ajo (whole roasted red snapper with garlic paste). I'm thinking that charmoula might just be a great finishing touch, but I think we'll call it salsa verde.

Chimichurri, or Cooking by Feel

"I'd eat anything, if you'd put this sauce on it."

So said a customer to me on Saturday night in reference to the vibrant green sauce on her grilled veal skirt steak. While this sauce is good, mighty good, I might not give up my firstborn for it as this woman seemed inclined to do. Still, it is a simple and marvelous complement to any grilled meat, which is its role on its home turf in Argentina, where it is on practically every table and where grilled meat (asado) is practically a sport.

The first time I ever encountered chimichurri, I thought "this is nothing but a slightly modified Piemontese salsa verde." This shouldn't be surprising because Argentina was settled in large part by Italians. Like its provincial Italian forebear, chimichurri is a roughly chopped sauce. But, unlike salsa verde which often uses hard-boiled egg yolk as an emulsifier, chimichurri separates easily.

In Argentina and now throughout South America, each cook's sauce is slightly different from every other and if the truth be told, each time a cook makes the same sauce, it is different: a reflection of mood and ingredients on hand. Certainly, I never make the same sauce twice. My ingredients are fairly classical, though more sauces than not contain oregano and fewer contain cilantro. And shallots are a nod to fine dining: rough sauces would contain only garlic. Suit yourself.

Here's my rough starting point:

3/4 c red wine vinegar
1 bunch of Italian parsley, destemmed and roughly chopped
8-10 sprigs cilantro, destemmed and roughly chopped
2 large shallots, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t black pepper
1/2 t salt
1/2 t crushed red pepper flakes
3/4 c extra virgin olive oil

And here's my rough procedure:

Chimichurri is not a smooth sauce. When I have time, I pound the solid ingredients out in a mortar and then add the oil and vinegar and season to taste. When I am pressed for time, as Saturday, or when I am making a big batch, the big VitaMix blender comes to the rescue. I might have used the RobotCoupe instead, but it was dirty.

When using a blender, make sure not to overblend. I add the vinegar, the rough chopped parsley/cilantro/oregano, and the rough chopped shallots and pulse the blender just to break the ingredients down into a chunky sauce. Then I mix in all the rest of the ingredients by hand and season to my whim.

Now on Saturday, after mixing up the batch for dinner, I thought it needed more bite, both from acid and from spice, so I added a couple extra tablespoons of red wine vinegar (I was going to add lemon juice, but the vinegar was at hand and the lemon was not), another big pinch of black pepper, and a larger pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. After it sat for an hour, it certainly got better, but I thought it needed more salt, so I added an extra pinch.

What I am trying to illustrate here is that recipes are merely guidelines and that ingredients, mood, circumstances, and the phase of the moon all influence the end product. At some point in your cooking career, you have to liberate yourself from recipes and cook by feel. Chimichurri is a great place to start.

Like some of us chefs, chimichurri gets better with age. Better to make it a day ahead. Refrigerate if the Health Department is looking over your shoulder.