Herbs and Condiments

Bouquet garni, which is French for “garnished bouquet,” is a classic herb mixture used for preparing stocks, soups, casseroles, meats, and vegetables.  It traditionally comprises a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary and a bay leaf. These herbs may be bundled into a strip of leek or a piece of celery stalk, or tied in a muslin bag or with string, to keep them together during cooking and allow easy removal before serving. Using a bouquet garni instead of simply adding the herbs to your dish helps with flavor, texture, convenience, and presentation. Fresh herbs will get soggy and often discolor when left to cook for a long time, and dry herbs are not the most attractive when floating at the top of a finished dish. Bundling up the herbs—whether dried or fresh—also makes for easy removal.

When using nettles in the kitchen, the best advice is to wear a thick pair of gloves, and then handle them as freely as you want.

Nettles are a historic ingredient, in fact ‘nettle pudding’ has been officially declared Britain’s oldest pudding, created round 6,000BC. The green weeds have been used for nettle beer and nettle wine through the ages, and are currently back on the menu thanks to the trend for foraging — with a simple nettle soup being an indisputably beautiful, British springtime dish.

Nettles have a verdant, spinach-like flavour, and you can almost taste the iron and minerals bursting out from the leaves. Best of all, these plants litter Britain’s verges and hedgerows in early springtime, are easy to identify and free to pick.

How to cook with nettles
It’s important to start by washing the leaves, you never know what animal has been doing what nearby!

Once the nettles have been washed, pick the leaves off the stalk. At this point, it’s best to think of stinging nettles in a similar fashion to spinach in terms of cooking the leaves. Quickly blanching them in a pot of boiling water will deaden the sting. But leave them for too long and – like spinach – the leaves will wilt too far, and start to lose flavour, texture and goodness.

Treat the cooked nettle leaves as you would treat cooked spinach leaves. Firstly, squeeze the moisture out of them and then add a splash of cream for a delicious side dish, or chop them loosely into a pasta sauce. Like spinach, it’s possible to freeze nettle leaves — do it in an ice cube tray, and then you can quickly defrost one cube at a time to quickly and easily add big green flavours to anything from an omelette to a risotto.

The curry plant is well-known for the oil extracted from its flowers. The oil has medicinal properties that can heal burned skin or chapped lips. It serves as an anti-inflammatory and fungicidal astringent for skin (2). It is an anticoagulant that can help thin the blood and decrease the risk of heart attacks for those who have high cholesterol levels. The oil can act as a catalyst to stimulate enzymes in the body which dissolve blood clots that form from internal hemorrhaging. It can also treat symptoms like coughing and fever. Oil form the curry plant can be utilized for aromatherapy to reduce anxiety and stress. It is often applied to skin as a moisturizer or to help fade scars. Since the oil has antiseptic and antibacterial properties, the oil can also be applied to cuts or wounds (4). Flowers from the curry plant can be used to make herbal tea. The plant’s leaves can be freshly plucked and added to salads. The essential oil extracted from the plant has been used in making ice creams, sweets, baked goods, soft drinks, and chewing gum in order to enhance fruit flavors

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