Have an herbal feast

BOB REEVES/Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 7:00 pm

There was a time when the only herb many people ever encountered was the parsley garnish on a restaurant dinner plate.

Times have changed.

Now herbs are popping up everywhere, adding tantalizing flavors and aromas to meats, potatoes, vegetables, salads, breads and desserts.

Becky Seth, naturalist at the Louise Evans Doole Herb Garden in Pioneers Park, has seen a growing interest in herbs — not just among gardeners, but everyone who loves food.

“People are definitely broadening their use of herbs,” she said. “One example: 10 years ago, no one (in Nebraska) had heard of pesto. Now you can get it in most stores.”

As a gardener, Seth believes in fresh herbs. That’s why she grows all her favorites in her own garden.

“One of the joys of the growing season is running out and getting fresh herbs,” she said.

For salads, nothing tops the flavors of fresh parsley and basil with other mixed greens.

Seth grows several varieties of basil and uses them in different ways. Opal basil (with dark purple leaves) she adds to vinegar for a salad dressing. “It gives it that gorgeous color,” she said.

Sweet basil is a basic ingredient of pesto, but there are more exotic flavors to spice up breads or cookies, such as cinnamon basil or lemon basil.

Lemon basil and several other lemony herbs are the featured plants in Saturday’s Herbal Festival at Pioneers Park Nature Center.

Attendees at the festival can sample many dishes prepared with herbs and then take home recipes.

Kathy Davis, owner of Beaver Bakery in Beaver Crossing, is catering an herbal luncheon featuring green bean and mushroom spread with winter savory; chilled mixed herb soup; tomato and pesto spiral bread; roasted potato salad with mixed herbs; lavender pound cake; and iced herbal tea.

In the afternoon, Seth and Bonnie Bake of the Nebraska Herbal Society will demonstrate the use of several lemony herbs, including the 2007 Herb of the Year, lemon balm.Workshop participants get to sample everything and take recipes home.

Davis likes to try new herbs in her home garden.

This year she’s experimenting with stevia, which has a leaf that’s about 300 times as sweet as sugar. “You bite off a piece of the plant and taste it, it’s like WOW!” she said. “It’s a natural, low-fat sweetener, and you can buy it at health food stores. A teaspoon is equal to a cup of sugar.”

Another new herb she’s tried is cutting celery, which looks and grows like parsley but has leaves that taste like celery, and can be used in salads, meat dishes and in any way that ordinary celery is used.

Davis also loves basils of all kinds.

One of her favorite salads (“and it’s so easy,” she said) is to top sliced tomatoes with a mixture of chopped garlic flowers and lemon basil. “It’s just fabulous,” she said.

Another simple and delicious salad uses equal parts of mint and green olives with pimientos, finely chopped and tossed with cooked pasta in olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. “It brings out the depth and the spiciness of the mint in a savory way that is quite unusual,” Davis said.

Both Seth and Davis agreed that fresh herbs are generally better than dried ones. If you don’t grow your own, the next best choice is a farmers market, where you can find herbs that were freshly picked. Those in the supermarket may be older and have lost some flavor.

“Fresh herbs have higher water content, so the flavor is more readily available to your taste buds,” Davis said.

For some dishes, however, Davis prefers dried herbs — for example, as topping for breads or pizza. Fresh herb leaves that are not mixed in can burn in the heat of an oven.

Her lavender pound cake uses lavender flower buds, which work equally well whether fresh or dried. Davis sells herbal breads and other baked goods most Sundays at the Old Cheney Road Farmers Market.

If you have leftover fresh herbs and want to dry them, it’s very simple, Davis said. “Just put them on a plate with a paper towel, and set them out in your house. If it’s not too humid, they’ll dry nicely at room temperature.” Another alternative is to spread the leaves on a towel-covered cookie sheet and place them in a gas oven that is not turned on. The gentle heat from the pilot light will dry them in a day or two.

Theresa Mieseler, owner of Shady Acres Herb Farm in Chaska, Minn., and the featured speaker at the Herbal Festival, is especially partial to rosemary.

It’s a savory herb that goes great with meats and vegetables. She steams baby red potatoes with rosemary, rubs the leaves on chicken for grilling and uses chopped rosemary leaves and oil atop zucchini. “I just like to add it to everything I’m cooking,” she said.

Mieseler also likes lemon verbena, another of the featured plants in the Herbal Festival. “It dries well, and makes a nice tea,” she said. “I like it on poached salmon, or any fish. I pulverize it and add it to a cake or cookie batter, or place leaves in the bottom of a pound cake — the flavor comes up as it bakes.”

She also makes a lemon verbena sorbet. “I do an infusion of the leaves and follow the sorbet recipe. It has a very lemony flavor.”

If you can’t make it out to the Herbal Festival, be sure to visit the Pioneers Park herb garden sometime this summer. You’ll see more than 175 varieties of herbs — and may get motivated to grow your own.

Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or breeves@journalstar.com.

Here are some recipes from the upcoming 2007 Herbal Festival at Pioneers Park Nature Center

The first two are from the Luscious Lemony Herbs Workshop and the last will be served at the luncheon. Registration for the Herbal Festival is closed but the Nature Center offers herbal programming each year. People can request to be put on an herbal mailing list by calling 441-7895.

Lemon Mint Sun Tea

¾ cup lemon balm

½ cup mint

½ cup chamomile flowers (available dried at Open Harvest)

3 tea bags (black or green tea)

Place herbs in a gallon container and add cold water to fill jar. Set in the sun for several hours. Strain. Pour tea over ice and refrigerate for at least 12 hours as flavors seem to meld over time. Sweeten with honey or sugar if desired.

Lemon Basil Snaps with Pistachios

2 cups unbleached or all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter, at room temperature

¾ cup sugar

1 large egg, or ¼ egg substitute

1 tablespoon minced zest of lemon

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/3 cup minced fresh lemon basil leaves (If lemon basil is not available, use sweet or cinnamon basil.)

For rolling:

1/3 cup finely chopped, shelled pistachio nuts

3 tablespoons sugar

Sift flour, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. In another bowl, cream the butter and ¾ cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg or egg substitute. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and lemon basil. Gradually add flour mixture to creamed mixture, mixing well after each addition. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour, or until mixture is firm.

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. In a small dish, combine pistachios and 3 tablespoons sugar. Shape the chilled dough into 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in sugar-nut mixture until coated. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten cookies slightly with the palm of your hand. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden. Transfer to racks to cool.

Yield: 4 dozen cookies

From “More Recipes from a Kitchen Garden” by Renee Shepherd and Fran Raboff and also found in “The Herbal Palate Cookbook” by Maggie Oster and Sal Gilbertie

Lemon Thyme Pita Crisps

4 plain pita bread rounds

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (melted) or olive oil

1 tablespoon minced lemon zest

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 teaspoons minced fresh lemon or French thyme leaves

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Split the pita rounds in half to make 2 full rounds. Combine the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Brush the mixture on the inside of the rounds. Then, cut each round into 8 equal wedges Place the wedges in a single layer on baking sheets.

Bake the wedges for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp and golden brown. Remove them from the oven and let them cool. Serve them a little warm or store in an airtight container. Makes 64 chips.

Tomato Pesto Spiral Loaves

½ cup lukewarm water

1 package dry yeast (2½ teaspoons)

1 teaspoon sugar

1½ cups tomato juice, heated to lukewarm

1 teaspoon salt

5 cups all-purpose or unbleached bread flour, plus additional as needed

2/3 cup classic basil pesto

Forming the dough and first rise: Pour the water into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a heavy duty electric mixer. Stir in the sugar. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let sit for several minutes to dissolve. Stir in tomato juice, salt and flour to make a medium soft dough. Knead on a lightly floured surface until dough is elastic and satiny, 8 to 10 minutes, adding up to ½ cup more flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking or knead for 8 minutes with the dough hook at medium, adding just enough flour so the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and a clean towl and let rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, 1½ to 2 hours.

Shaping and second rise: Punch down the dough, turn it onto a lightly floured surface and cut it in half. With a large rolling pin, roll one of the pieces into a rectangle, about 10x15 inches. The dough will be elastic, and you will have to be persistent until it stays the size you want. Using a rubber spatula, spread half the pesto over the surface of the dough, leaving a ½ inch border all around. Beginning from the short end, roll up the dough tightly. Pinch the seam to seal it well. Gently stretch and shape the loaf until it is an even cylinder about 14 inches long. Place the loaf seam down on a large greased baking sheet. Shape the second loaf in the same way and place it alongside the first, allowing space for them to spread. Sprinkle the tops of the loaves with a little more flour, cover them with a clean towel, and let them rise until again doubled in bulk, 1 to 1½ hours.

Baking: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Slash 4 shallow slits in the top of each loaf with a sharp serrated knife or straight edged razor blade. Bake the loaves on the center oven rack until they are well browned and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool them on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Adapted from “The Herbfarm Cookbook” by Jerry Traunfeld

Basic Basil Pesto

1½ cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves

4 garlic cloves

3 tablespoons parsley (preferably Italian); you can replace the parsley with oregano

½ cup pine nuts or walnuts

½ cup olive oil

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or half Romano, half Permesan)

In a food processor: Place ¾ cup basil leaves in the processor and twirl until well chopped, add 2 cloves of garlic, ½ the parsley and ¼ cup nuts and twirl again. Slowly add ¼ cup olive oil, stopping to scrape the sides periodically. Repeat with the rest of the basil, garlic, parsley, nuts and olive oil. Mix batches together, add salt and cheese.

Becky's blender method: Place ¼ cup olive oil, garlic and parsley in blender and process until smooth. Add basil and blend, adding more oil if necessary. Add nuts, again adding only enough oil to make a smooth paste. Remove from blender jar, add salt and cheese.

Using pesto: Serve over pasta or polenta. Add to soups (wonderful in vegetarian vegetable or minestrone soup!) Add to salads (pasta/vegetable salad is good, so is chicken salad.) Add a recipe of basil pesto to a container of ricotta cheese for a yummy filling for manicotti. Spread on baguette slices and broil slightly for a great appetizer. Spread over grilled or broiled salmon.

Note from Becky Seth: If you are going to freeze pesto, some authors suggest you should add the cheese and salt only when you are ready to use it. I have not found the flavor diminished by freezing it as is. I even send pesto through the mail to my children and they think it's wonderful! To freeze in small amounts, put in ice cube trays or drop by the spoonful onto a wax-paper lined cookie sheet. When frozen, place cubes in a bag.

Lavender Pound Cake

Softened butter and flour for preparing the pan

2 tablespoons lavender buds, fresh or dried

2½ cups sugar, preferably fine (baker’s sugar)

3 sticks (12 ounces) butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

5 large eggs, at room temperature

3 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

¾ cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Heavily butter a 10-inch tube pan, coat it with flour, and knock out the excess. Whirl the lavender and ¼ cup of the sugar in a spice grinder, mini food processor, or blender until finely ground.

Put 3 sticks of butter, the remaining 2¼ cups sugar, the lavender sugar, vanilla and salt in the bowl of a mixer. Turn to medium high, and mix for 4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and beat another minute. The mixture will be very fluffy and nearly white. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating the batter well after each addition. Alternately add the flour and sour cream (1/3 of the flour, ½ the sour cream, another 1/3 of the flour, the rest of the sour cream, and finally the remaining flour), beating each addition into the batter completely before you add the next. Scrape down the sides of the bowl several times during the process.

Scoop the batter into the prepared pan evenly and gently whack the pan on the counter a couple of times to expel air pockets. Bake the cake for 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 35 minutes, or until it is golden brown and springs back when pressed, and a wooden skewer emerges dry after being inserted in the center. Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for about 15 minutes, then turn it out onto the rack. Once it is completely cool, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. It will be best the second day and still moist after about 4 days.

Can also be made in two loaf pans or as cupcakes.

From “The Herbal Kitchen” by Jerry Traunfeld

Have an herbal feast

by bob reeves

Lincoln Journal Star