Why Martha, Please Tell Me About your herbs

This week's topics include my impersonation of Martha Stewart (the horror), why my herbs are better than yours, I rank fresh herbs and their general wussiness, cooking on a slab of rock, and champagne Thursday!   

My recent hiatus.  Yes, I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last post.  It's like my grandma used to say:  "If you can't blog about something good, don't blog at all."  

Ok, it was actually about saying something nice about people and nothing to do with blogging.  Grandma was not, shall we say, a blogger.

Whatever.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Nothing good?   No blog.  

A Martha Stewart moment?  Every spring I grow (or regrow, as the case may be) an herb garden, and each year it gets bigger and has more herbs.  Fortunately, I live in an area where the growing season is fairly intense.  Unfortunately, the growing season is also somewhat quick and when it’s over, it's over.  Like "night, night termite" over.  Winter sets in and that is, as they say, that.

We recently had a cold spell, so I brought the herb garden into the house to protect it and let it live a little longer.  Check it out.  

During the last few years, here’s what I’ve learned about herbs:

Once an herb starts to get big, it needs to be dramatically trimmed down.  I know this makes logical sense to the gardeners who read this.  You have to trim the big pieces so that the sweeter and smaller sprouts have a chance to grow.  If you don’t do this, the plant will get too big and die.  Don’t ask me how I know this. 

Rosemary – looks all butch and tough and you’d think it would survive the winter.  You’d be wrong.  The thing’s got branches as big as small bushes, but it flat out dies if it’s left out during the winter. 

Oregano – it’s got delicate limbs, that are almost like a flower’s stalk.  Frankly, it’s a delicate herb all around.  It doesn’t die during the winter.  It goes dormant.  Go figure.

Basil – an all around wimpy herb.  It’s got limbs and stalks which look almost like a small tree.   However, it shrivels up and dies at the slightest hint of foul weather. 

Sage – the heartiest of the bunch.  Seriously, I cut this thing back significantly 4 or 5 times each season and it grows back like a weedy bush.  At times, it’s two feet across and as healthy as it can be.  It’s the irony of growing stuff.  Sage is the herb I use the least of, yet it grows the most.  It also goes dormant during the winter and comes back with a fury in the spring.

Ok, WF, this is all fine and moderately interesting at best.  So, where’s the Martha Stewart moment?

If growing my own herbs wasn’t enough, I also cut them and dry them for future use.  I get to use my own herbs all year long, even if the fresh herbs have gone dormant.

Drying your own herbs is not difficult at all.  I say that, though I live in a very dry environment, which makes it easier.  I cut the herbs, wash them, and lay them whole onto a cookie sheet lined with paper towels.  Check out the photos.    

I come back a week or two later, strip the leaves off, and store them in a plastic bag or reuse an herb container.

Like I said, a Martha moment.  Then again, I bet my dried herbs are better than yours and I know here mine came from!

Cooking on Salt.  Yes, I said cooking on salt and not with salt.  As some of you may recall, I recently received a slab o’ Himalayan pink salt as a present.  It’s meant to be cooked on, as opposed to being ground up and used as, well, salt. 

The concept is that you put the salt block on a heat source and slowly bring it up to a searing temperature.  I used my cooktop.  Here it is warming up.  Apparently, if you heat the block up too quickly, the block will crack. 

So, I decided to cook king salmon and thin strips of rib eye steak.  I didn’t brine the fish.  I figured the salt block would impart more than enough salt onto the fish.  Here they are cooking. 

The block wasn’t hot enough to brown the meat, though it was hot enough to cook the fish and the meat. 

For the salmon, I prepared a pan sauce with butter, champagne, lemon thyme, garlic, and a little salt.  I let it reduce and drizzled it over the salmon as I served it. 

Why champagne?  It was Thursday night.  Can you think of a better reason to have champagne?

The Review?  A unique way to cook, to say the least.  The salmon was very nice, with just a hint of salt flavor.  The skin on one side blocked some of salt from getting into the fish.  The strips of steak were awesome.  Salty, beefy goodness, though it wasn’t what you think of when you think salty.  Himalayan salt imparts a complex flavor.  Imagine really good sea salt, but much more complex.

All in all, a pretty good start for a new way of cooking.  I can’t wait to try other things, like veggies tossed in olive oil (broccoli, mushrooms, bell peppers, etc.), shrimp, and scallops.  I think a delicate white fish, such as tilapia, would also be great cooked this way. 

Happy cooking.

WF