Fresh herbs

I tend to go through serial obsessions in the kitchen. Every once in a while I’ll stumble across a new ingredient or a new technique and then spend the next several weeks exploring it. This past spring and summer I was in a Middle Eastern flavor phase.  One dish I made during that binge has turned into my current obsession – fresh herbs.

The dish was a parsley-mint salad I adapted from Ghillie Basan’s Mezze: Small Plates to Share.  It sounds, and is pretty simple.  Parsley, herbs, shallots, olive oil, lemon, salt – that’s it. The first time I made it, I grossly simplified Basan’s version, omitting the bulgur wheat that suggested a variant of tabbouleh and skipping the pomegranate syrup because I didn’t have any on hand.  Nonetheless, it was a wonderful, fresh side salad but it also taught me a lesson I hadn’t learned before.

If you want to use fresh herbs, you need to use a LOT of fresh herbs.  Every summer, I’d get attracted by the herbs on sale at the market and I’d buy a bunch.  Then I’d scatter a few leaves or parsley over a plate of vegetables or put a small bundle in a soup as a bouquet garni.  The herbs were usually invisible or part of the background and sooner or later I’d forget about them.

This parsley mint salad pointed me in another direction, because the parsley and the mint are the center of this dish.  When used in this kind of quality, the fresh, biting taste of the parsley and the coolness of the mint become the focus of attention.

I’ve used this parsley-mint combination as the basis for dozens of variations.  Basan’s original was wonderful, once I was able to track down some pomegranate syrup.  A finely chopped tomato is a nice addition. Walnuts are good.  I once tripled the amount of shallot, but sliced them instead of dicing them and macerated them in lemon juice before adding and that was an unexpected and delightful surprise.  A diced jalapeño added a very interesting note against the cool mint.  And so on and so on.

Yesterday’s lunch was a good example of how I’ve come  to use this parsley-mint base. While I was cooking some Israeli couscous, I chopped almost a full bunch of mint and an equal amount of Italian flat-leaf parsley. I also had a 3-4 stalks of tarragon that were leftover from something I’d made a couple of days ago, so I added them.  Added some finely diced cucumber, a handful of halved heirloom cherry tomatoes, and the Israeli couscous and there’s a fresh, flavorful lunch that took almost no work.

The key is to use enough of the herbs so that they are able to make an impact. The tarragon steak sauce I’ve talked about so often (here and here) and the charmoula that has become my all-time favorite condiment both feature herbs front and center.  A good example of this is this version of a caprese salad.  Tomato, buffalo mozzarella, and basic has been a staple of our summer dinner table for years, but the basil part had always been more or less a light garnish for color and a little flavor.  This summer I’ve started adding a handful or more of basil ripped up a little instead of 4-5 sliced leaves and it really makes an impact.  By the way, you might want to use buffalata instead of regular buffalo mozzarella in your caprese salads.  We discovered it in Italy – inside an outer shell of buffalo mozzarella is a thick, creamy center that is delicious.  In France we are able to find buffalata with truffles in the interior cream – out of this world.

Another example of fresh herbs en masse is this dressing I used for a slow cooked cod.  The fish is cooked in a slow oven for about 15-20 minutes. The dressing on it is parsley, cilantro, tarragon, shallots, lemon juice, and olive oil (a lot like the parsley-mint salad described above). I warmed up the olive oil before adding it which added a little extra when adding it to the fish.

One other interesting approach (sorry, but I don’t have a picture) was to fry about a dozen sage leaves in 1/4 inch of olive oil for just about a minute to get them crispy.  Then, with the oil still hot, fried a couple of potatoes sliced into 1/4 inch rounds in the sage oil then crumbled the crispy sage leaves over the potatoes.  The taste of sage was explosive.

Recipe – Israeli couscous and herb salad

Ingredients

1 cup Israeli couscous

1 bunch mint

1 bunch parsley

1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

Feta cheese

olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper to taste

Directions

Cook the couscous as you normally would and set aside.

Finely chop the mint and parsley (knife, food processor, etc).  If you have other herbs like tarragon, thyme, savory, sumac or oregano, feel free to add them. Add the cucumber and tomatoes and toss.  Add the couscous and mix thoroughly.  Dress the salad to taste.  Sprinkle the top with feta cheese.  Serve as is or over a soft lettuce.

Slow cooked cod with herb dressing

Ingredients

2 6oz cod fillets

1 bunch parsley, finely chopped

1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

2 tbl shallots, diced

2 tbl olive oil plus drizzle on the fish

1 tbl lemon juice

salt and pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325°.  Season the fish with salt and pepper, and drizzle with a little olive oil.  Begin checking the fish for doneness at 15 minutes – it’s cooked when the fish flakes easily or it reaches 145º.

Add the shallots to the lemon juice and let sit for at least 15 minutes.  Warm the olive oil over low heat.  When the shallots and lemon juice are ready, mix them with the herbs in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.  Add the olive oil and taste to see if additional seasoning is needed.

Spoon the herb mixture generously on the fish and serve.