Herbs - The Essence of Flavor
In any number of cookbooks and recipes you will find advice on which herbs go with what. I’m not going to take that route.
While there certainly are marriages that are tried and tested, such as tomatoes and basil or lamb and rosemary, the reality is that the use of herbs is every bit as much a matter of personal taste as any other aspect of cooking.
Consequently, what I want you to do is to sample as many herbs as you can and try to marry up the flavors with the foods you are familiar with. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Just close your eyes and think about it.
You will find, after a while, that you will instinctively know which flavoring to use, when to use it and how much of it you need.
Do this with both fresh and dried herbs. Crush a little between finger and thumb and smell it. This is much more important than your sense of taste.
Something magical will happen. You will come to realize that fresh herbs are not better than dried ones, they simply impart a different flavor. There are two major exceptions to this.
One is mint, which has a strange musty flavor when dried, and the other is chives, which are so delicate that the flavor rarely survives cooking. Using dried chives is therefore pretty pointless.
One other point to watch out for is that some dried herbs can remained inedible even after thorough cooking. Rosemary is a very good example of this and needs to be filtered out of any liquids in which it has been used as a flavoring.
In any case, fresh or dried, it is better to chop up herbs such as this before using them.
Using herbs in cooking
Many herbs, such as basil and coriander (sometimes called Chinese parsley and cilantro in the USA) are terrific simply torn up in salads. Note that I said torn up and not cut; only cut herbs if you intend to cook them.
It’s important to recognize that some herbs lose flavor with extended cooking, even in their dried state. Fortunately it’s fairly easy to spot which those are.
Tough leaved herbs such as bay can be safely added at the start of cooking time and will maintain their flavor. In fact, they may need to be in the food for as long as possible in order for their flavor to fully develop.
Herbs with light and delicate leaves, however, will lose their flavor very quickly once in contact with heat. To use basil in a soup, for example, you needed to add it, not to the hot liquid as you might expect, but rather to the warm plate you intend to serve the soup in. Then pour the soup on top of it.
Alternatively, simply sprinkle it on top of the soup and leave it there. It will make an attractive decoration and impart a wonderful aroma as you take the soup to the table.
What’s that? You want to use a tureen and serve the soup at the table? No problem. Sprinkle the herb in its raw state on top of the soup anyway. The effect, when you remove the lid, will be the same. Just stir it in as you serve.
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