Herbs make everything taste better, writes Hugo Arnold
Four years into our new house, and we finally have a herb garden. While the intent has been there from day one, realising the ambition has taken rather a long time. We started with window boxes, but the builders knocked them off their ledges. A patch planted in the garden was destroyed by a pile of rubble.
Now we have foot-square sections cut out of cobble stones, with sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme and mint. What about parsley? We use so much parsley that we have it in a large bed of its own, and still have to buy reinforcements. I use only flat leaf, as I dislike the texture of the curly variety.
Sage is another favourite, but oh so strong. I don't use it for stuffings, when it tends to dominate, but it's good for flavoured butters to use over steak, or fried to a crisp and left whole to accompany grilled chops, pasta or even potatoes. The frying seems to tone down the flavour, so it melds rather than overwhelms. The mint survived the building works. Despite the rubble, this hardy plant came back, which is lucky as my plant has a particular peppery flavour, and none of the sweetness which can afflict other varieties.
Rosemary gets top billing when used to stuff a roast chicken, along with garlic and lemon, or stirred into sauted onions, along with garlic and parsley. There is a River Cafe recipe for pork sausages which uses oodles of rosemary to transform them into a sauce for pasta - robust cooking of the best kind.
Copious use of herbs can reduce reliance on salt. Herbs help to enhance the inherent flavours in a dish, which is why we use salt in the first place. Try bay or sage leaves under the skin of a roast chicken, for example, or lots of chopped rosemary added in with your roast potatoes towards the end of cooking. Or a leg of lamb roasted on top of a bed of bay leaves.
This is a good time to make up herb butters for freezing. Rolled into a tube and wrapped in clingfilm, they hold the flavour of summer and can be sliced on to a grilled chop or piece of fish. In my experience, this is far more successful than freezing herbs by themselves.