Drying Herbs

This weekend we wanted to dry some herbs, specifically cilantro.  It comes up volunteer in the garden most years from previous year's crops.  We let some of the cilantro go to seed.  Where the seeds fall, the next year you'll have cilantro sprouting up.  The interesting thing is that the seeds of the cilantro plant are coriander.  Those small ball-looking seeds are used as a spice to cook with.  The plant itself is used to cook with pinto beans, in Mexican rice, in soups, on tacos, and my personal favorite - in scrambled eggs.

There's one problem with cilantro.  At the first sign of warm days, it bolts.  It will go to seed faster than Usain Bolt to the finish line.  In South Louisiana, it is a very short window to grow it.  Sometimes, before it bolts, we harvest it and freeze it in ice cube trays for use throughout the year.  Other times, like today, we'll harvest it and dry it in a food dehydrator on the herb setting.  First, we picked a bunch and washed it up real good.

We snip off all of the leaves for drying.  Usually for cooking, we don't do this.  There is lots of flavor in the stems as well.  For drying, we do cut most of the stems off.

We line the cilantro leaves on the trays of the dehydrator and turn it on.  When you cut up the stems and leaves, the unmistakable scent of cilantro fills the kitchen.  Drying them, however, doesn't really release the scent like I would have thought.  I began to read about this and learned that fresh cilantro is ALWAYS better than dried, because the rich, pungent flavor dissipates when heated or cooked.  Dried cilantro will do in a pinch, but fresh is always better.  I guess I knew this, but we'll dry some anyway for those times when fresh cilantro is not available in the garden.

In no time at all in a dehydrator, the cilantro is dried.  When we are sure the leaves are fully dried, we'll put them in a labeled ziploc bag and hang them for future use in cooking.  I'm interested in trying them out to see if dried cilantro retains some of the flavor that fresh-picked cilantro does.

In addition to mechanically drying in the food dehydrator, I notice that Tricia has a bundle of cilantro hanging to dry naturally on the back patio.  It won't be as fast as the dehydrator, but an experiment to see if we can get the same results with the sun.

Serving Lemon Balm Tea

A year or two ago I ordered some vegetable seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They frequently will send you a packet or two of free seeds with your order.  I always think this is a neat deal as it gives you the opportunity to grow something that you might not have ever planted.  Such is the case with the free package of Lemon Balm seeds that I got.  This year I planted them right next to a terra cotta pot of oregano on the back porch. The lemon balm is thriving.

Lemon balm is aptly named.  If you brush by the plant, it gives off a nice lemony fragrance.  If you look at the leaves, it might remind you of mint, and that's no coincidence for lemon balm is in the mint family.

So other than smelling lemon balm, what are other uses of it?  I read that you can add chopped lemon balm leaves at the very end of cooking either chicken or fish and it complements the dish well.  I also read (and I'm gonna try this because it sounds so good!) that you can soften butter and mix in 2 Tablespoons of minced lemon balm leaves and a little honey and then spread it on warm, homemade bread.

Today, though, I decided that I would make my wife and daughter a cup of lemon balm tea.  To do this, I cut a small bunch of lemon balm leaves and stems, washed them and put them in the bottom of a tea pot.  Then I boiled water and poured it over the lemon balm leaves and let it steep for 15 minutes.  At the end of the allotted time, I took the top off and inhaled deeply.  It smells real nice.

I poured the freshly-steeped lemon balm tea into teacups and brought them to my wife.

She really enjoyed it and said it was nice and relaxing.  I took a sip, too.  It seems like this would also be refreshing by serving it cold as iced tea.  We have a couple of months of summer left, so I'll try this for sure.  Lemon Balm tea.  Soothing and delicious.

Don't Get Perturbed About The Herbs

We cook with a lot of herbs. In order to have them in close proximity to the kitchen, we have them growing in terra cotta pots out on the back patio.  Right outside the french doors, we have oregano, parsley, and rosemary growing.  Most grow all year long.  Due to the quantity of plants and the size, our basil is located in the garden, so it is not as convenient.  Perhaps I'll grow a basil plant on the patio this spring for cooking purposes and leave the others in the garden for making pesto in large quantities like we frequently do.

Just this past weekend, I started a few pots of parsley, dill and cilantro seeds growing on the back patio.  Fresh parsley smells GREAT all cut up and we love to add bunches of it on top of a steaming bowl of gumbo.  When I was in the grocery store business, we would get some specialty mustard from a company called Inglehoffer.  They made different herbed mustards that came in little glass jars.  My favorite was a dill mustard and I'd like to make some of our own.  Another thing is recently I had a chicken sandwich with dill mayonnaise and although I loathe mayonnaise, it was pretty good.

Finally, cilantro.  We like it in pico de gallo and in Tricia's rice dishes.  Some people love it and some people hate it and say it tastes like soap and smells like stink bugs. This Article tells you why.  It is genetic.  It you hate it, chances are you have the OR6A2 gene that allows you to pick up the scent of aldehyde chemicals.  Those are found in both cilantro and soap.  I almost forgot mint!  We have mint growing out on the back patio as well.  Fresh mint hot tea is real good.

Parsley, Dill, Cilantro and Oregano (not as catchy as Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)

Green Onions.  Now here is something that I can't get enough of.  I love to add a big, heaping handful on top of a big plate of red beans and rice and sausage.  So Good!  Although I planted a bunch of it from seed recently, they haven't germinated yet and we needed some for a recipe that Tricia was making.  Unfortunately, we had to run to the store and pick up a bunch of commercially grown green onions.

I usually cut the green onions all the way down to the roots and use the whole thing for cooking with, but here's the deal: if the green onions you purchased were in good shape (and why would you purchase them if they weren't), simply keep the roots wet and when you've snipped off the tops, plant them in your garden.  I just planted four of them yesterday as you can see below:

"Recycled" Green Onions

The green onions from the same purchased bunch that I put in the ground last week in the center below were already almost ready to be snipped and used to flavor delicious gumbos, soups, and rice and gravy.  

Grows in NO TIME!!

So while we patiently wait for our green onions planted from seed to grow, we'll have some 'recycled green onions' in inventory while we wait.  I'd like to try planting some other herbs this spring that we haven't used before - like fennel, sage, and thyme.  I also have some lemon balm that I'll get started in early spring.