Susan Belsinger - The Culinary Herbal

TIMBER PRESS PORTLAND, OREGON

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The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the authors or Timber Press. The authors and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. In particular, ingesting wild plants and fungi is inherently risky. Plants can be easily mistaken and individuals vary in their physiological reactions to plants that are touched or consumed. Please do not attempt selftreatment of a medical problem without consulting a qualified health practitioner.

Published in 2016 by Timber Press, Inc.

Timber Press

The Haseltine Building

133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450

Portland, Oregon 97204-3527

timberpress.com

Cover design by Anna Eshelman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Belsinger, Susan, author.

The culinary herbal: growing and preserving 97 flavorful herbs/Susan Belsinger, Arthur O. Tucker; with photos by Shawn Linehan.First edition.

Includes index.

eISBN 978-1-60469-747-6

1. Cooking (Herbs) 2. Herb gardening. I. Tucker, Arthur O., author. II. Title.

To the McCleary girlsgrandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, aunts and niecesthe circle of life

S.L.B.

To Sherry, our children and their families, and Rex, for putting up with me all these years

A.O.T.

PREFACE

COLLECTIVELY, WE HAVE more than a century of experience in gardening and cooking. Art started growing things when he was six as the child of what would later be called hippies (but in the late 1940s were merely considered poor survivalists), and he has dabbled in herbs ever since. Susan cooked at her grandmothers side, starting as a little girl and throughout her childhood, but she didnt have her first garden for growing herbs until she was twenty, and she taught her first cooking class at that age.

Art, a recently retired professor of botany at Delaware State University, still occasionally teaches botany and horticulture, and he continues to enjoy researching and writing about herbs. He learned to cook when young because, with two busy parents who were just trying to keep the family afloat, he got tired of eating bologna sandwiches. While he grew up on traditional Pennsylvania German dishes, Julia Child on TV was an epiphany, and he hasnt stopped since.

Susan has written countless books and articles on gardening, herbs, and cooking, often focusing on the garden-to-kitchen aspectsgrow, harvest, and create recipes. Recently referred to as a flavor artist, she has shared her passion for herbs and cooking through teaching and inspiring others with sensory experiences. Art has been her mentor, guiding her in the botany, science, and chemistry of all facets of herbs.

Herbs brought us together, first as colleagues, then as friends. We both love growing herbs and other plants, spending time in our gardens, and visiting other gardens. We especially like to prepare and eat good food. Over the years, we have come to respect each others highly developed sense of smell and taste. When we are together, we go on ad infinitum about botanicals, sensory experience, and cookingwe are flavor and fragrance junkies.

We have written this book for gardeners who like to cook and cooks who want to grow the best-flavored culinary herbs, as well as for the everyday herbal enthusiast. In the book, we share our passion for cultivating and cooking with herbs, from the traditional ones to little-known plants and backyard weeds, to pass on our knowledge about the flavors and fragrances of herbs.

WHY DO WE PUT HERBS INTO OUR SOUPS, casseroles, desserts, and beverages? Because herbs add depth of flavor to any food and enhance and round out aromas and tastes. Herbs are broadly regarded as green plants that are used for culinary, medicinal, and ornamental purposes. Generally, herbs are not used on their own as a dish, but combined with other foods to add flavor, nutrients, and medicinal virtues. We practice all three of these uses every day, and we are passionate about using herbs in the kitchen. For decades, we have been wooed and enchanted by these inimitable fragrant and tasty plants. We know them by their appearance, their leaves, their shapes and color, and their flowers and seedsand we know them intimately through sensory experience. We have written this book to share our knowledge about growing and cooking with herbs, so that you can cultivate these various plants and create and enjoy foods graced by them.

In this culinary herbal, we go beyond popular herbs such as parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and venture farther afield. While we do include many herbs that are easily cultivated in our gardens, we also discuss a number of wild herbs often considered weeds that we forage from our backyards, meadows and fields, and the woods edge. We also include plants that are not typically considered herbs. For example, although elder is considered a shrub or tree, garlic is a bulb, and arugula or chile peppers are usually found in the vegetable garden, these plants are grown and harvested for seasoning. We have gathered together this collection of herbs specifically for their culinary attributes. We give you descriptive details of cultivation, aroma, and taste for nearly 100 herbs, as well as examples of the many foods and dishes in which they are used.

Ancient herbals were the medicinal manuals for their eras. They offered recipes for treating all sorts of maladies as well as for tonics, and some of the plants were even toxic and dangerous to consume. Depending on the author, plant descriptions were sometimes included in these herbals.

This book is a modern-day herbal. Rather than exploring the medicinal properties of herbs, this book is a gardening-and-cooking culinary herbal, focusing on the smells and tastes offered by certain plants. We have sorted through many species and varieties of culinary herbs and selected our favorites to cultivate for cooking. Having spent a large part of our lives growing, smelling, tasting, and eating herbs, we offer our opinions on which herbs lend the best fragrance and flavor.

Everyone talks about how things taste, but we dont often hear people discussing how a certain dish smells. And yet flavor is derived from both taste and smell.

Smell is not only a precursor to flavor, but it is an integral part of flavor. Without smell, you cannot sense and savor the full flavor of a food. In fact, flavor is about 90 percent smell.

Here is a simple experiment you can do right now to understand this proposition. Pick an herb leaf, but do not rub it or sniff it. Hold your nose closed with your fingers and do not let go. While holding your nose, take a little nibble of the herb leaf. Do you taste anything? No? While still holding your nose, take another nibble to be sure. Same results? Now let go of your nose and breathe. You will be amazed to experience the herb fragrance and flavor filling your nose and mouth. Now you understand the smell-flavor relationship. We do this experiment with children and adults to show them the power of our olfactory sense. Try it with your friends and family.