The culinary herbal Growing & preserving 97 flavorful herbs

"WHAT'S THE POINT, MOM?" my younger son asked one afternoon when I put down my pruning shears and we sat together on a boulder near a large old azalea. In those days, he thought I had all the answers. "What's the point of gardening? Everything's going to die, anyway." That's about as profound as it gets in anyone's backyard, and no, this wasn't the time for a teaching moment on dormancy. What is the point? Why do we toil so? My short answer: Because we can. Because we're here. Whatever your answer - for food, for beauty, for peace, for escape, for muscle tone - there are books aplenty to help you ponder root causes. How about gardening to heal and nurture your land? Ambitious as it may sound, there's a quiet revolution underway among landscape designers, one that encourages ecological renewal by letting plants be where they want to be rather than where we force them to grow, GARDEN REVOLUTION: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press, $39.95), by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher, is an invaluable and provocative resource for gardeners who want to collaborate with their local ecologies - and save themselves both heartbreak and backbreak. "Nature is your partner," Weaner insists. Enough with arranging and planting in conventional ways; enough with amending soil, changing pH levels, fertilizing and irrigating. Let's base our gardening on "how plants and wildlife associate in a natural state." This doesn't mean aesthetic considerations disappear - indeed, Weaner's landscapes have a shambolic beauty - but he warns that it isn't a style for the micromanager. "This sort of design requires letting the landscape make many of the decisions." You should be prepared to enjoy that vibrant patch of cardinal flowers for only a season or two, until stronger competitors take hold. After all, a garden is "as much a process as a place." Deer are also part of the ecosystem, and Weaner creates companion plantings that seem to repel them. Although I'm still putting my money on fences, this book is generous with practical considerations. I had one aha! moment after another, especially in the chapters on creating meadows and fringing a woodland with shrubs. "God, for me, is nature," Roberto Burle Marx once said. With the publication of a lavish monograph, ROBERTO BURLE MARX: Brazilian Modernist (Jewish Museum/Yale University, $50), the work of this great midcentury landscape architect, who invented the modernist tropical garden, will become better known. A handful of American designers, notably the esteemed Raymond Jungles, based in Miami, have taken inspiration from Marx's graphic, colorful work. The book's accompanying show, running this summer at the Jewish Museum in New York, will help capture new hearts. Although Burle Marx designed more than 2,000 gardens around the world and discovered nearly 50 plant species, he's probably best known for his work at Brasilia and for the mosaic pavements of Avenida Atlântica, along Copacabana Beach. His own garden, now a park in a rural area near Rio de Janeiro, contains an important botanical collection of over 3,500 species. Oddly, it was during a childhood trip with his family to Berlin that the young Burle Marx became captivated by the tropical plants that had been exported to German gardens. In Europe he also came into contact with Cubism. The Burle Marx household was lively and cultured; his parents entertained Arthur Rubinstein and Claudio Arrau, Stefan Zweig and Le Corbusier during their visits to Brazil. A chapter detailing Burle Marx's Jewish roots - and commissions - is especially moving. Equally enthralling is his art: In addition to paintings and sculpture, he designed textiles, tiles, jewelry and tapestries. The book's images of his gouaches, like the one of the design for a rooftop garden, are stunning. Certainly, for Burle Marx, gardening satisfied a spiritual hunger. Of the fabulous - and fleeting - flower of Victoria amazonica, a water lily of epic proportions, he noted, "When I see something like this I start to believe that life has meaning." But let's turn to another kind of nourishment. If your vegetable garden happens to be on your roof, Annie Novak is the genius for your place. Novak, who is passionate about "people, plants, food politics," is a co-founder and the head farmer of the nation's first commercial green roof farm, in Brooklyn. Whipping winds? Tar paper? Scorching sun? No problem. New York has a long tradition of rooftop gardening and, as Novak points out, not just for the owners of penthouses. Her Brooklyn farm opened for business in the spring of 2009, immediately attracting bees, bugs and buyers. THE ROOFTOP GROWING GUIDE: How to Transform Your Roof Into a Vegetable Garden or Farm (Ten Speed, paper, $23) features farmers from across the country, with advice for everyone. Novak's prose is clear, warm and accessible. No space is wasted in her garden, and it's the same in her book, where every page is packed with information. You'll learn how to build a Berlese-Tullgren funnel (a simple century-old tool "for luring out and identifying ground-dwelling insects"); you can decide whether Bokashi composting is for you (speedy but smelly, as it's anaerobic); and you can even learn the names of the various parts of your roof (a useful demystification for many homeowners). For years, Novak has been proselytizing for a movement that has now reached global proportions. She notes that Chicago has seven million square feet of green roofs; as of 2013, Portland, Ore., had 300 ecoroofs and 130 roof gardens; and in Germany, one rooftop in 10 is green. But why wait to have flat acreage over your head? Many of us live on patches of ground that look as desiccated as that roof Novak started with. Her book is also a terrific introduction to farming in Any Yard,U.S.A. Nothing like herbs to punch up those veggies, the culinary HERBAL: Growing and Preserving 97 Flavor ful Herbs (Timber Press, $27.50), by Susan Beisinger and Arthur O. Tucker - self-described "flavor and fragrance junkies" - moves to the front ranks of the now-crowded field of herbals. Suddenly, everyone seems to be growing hyssop, lemon verbena, elder and cumin. Herbs are quite satisfying, the golden retrievers of the plant world - they run till they drop, and it's hard to dampen their joie de vivre. In other words, they're kind to new (or aging) gardeners. Without a lot of pomp and fuss, this guidebook walks you through the propagation, harvesting and preserving of herbs. The photographs by Shawn Linehan are enticing too. You aren't the only one with an appetite, CARNIVOROUS PLANTS: Gardening With Extraordinary Botanicals (Timber Press, $29.95), by Nigel Hewitt-Cooper, might keep you up at night, contemplating its vastly gorgeous weirdness - or at least suggesting a way to cope with your housefly problem. Hewitt-Cooper harbors a tender love for his subject and seems a bit hurt when people snub his plants: "Many pass my displays at flower shows," he writes in his introduction, "declaring, 'Oh, I don't like those things.'" He aims to dispel a few myths. Carnivorous plants aren't mere novelties; they have "grace and elegance." They aren't strictly greenhouse plants, and deserve a place among our favorite garden ornamentals. And they aren't all enamored of the tropics; many thrive in temperate conditions. What plants of prey do need is full sun, a period of cold dormancy and rainwater - not tap water, which contains too many minerals, to say nothing of chlorine. If this already sounds daunting, Hewitt-Cooper suggests trying window boxes - ideal for Venus flytraps and all the pitcher plants - or bog gardens. Surprisingly, many carnivorous plants aren't fussy about freezing. When it comes to feeding time, any manner of bugs will satisfy, though Hewitt-Cooper warns that earthworms might produce a nasty smell. He has seen one of his plants trap a small bird - but that's a rarity. In any case, his "straight-up obsession" may well suggest the beginning of a garden trend. I'm certainly spotting more pitcher plants in fancy flower arrangements. Speaking of which: Many of us toil in the garden for the sake of beauty. It's a great pleasure to bring flowers inside when the day grows dim, so you can enjoy them on your kitchen counter or bedside table, STYLING NATURE: A Masterful Approach to Floral Arrangements (Rizzoli, $45), by Lewis Miller with Irini Arakas, is a treasure. Shot by the photographer Don Freeman, an artist in his own right, every page is worth a long gaze. As a floral designer, Miller has adroitly handled assignments as daunting as gala openings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but here he's aiming to inspire you and me. I'm the first to admit that I generally stuff whatever I have, higgledy-piggledy, into a vase, without giving much thought to shape or color, much less texture. "We've seen calla lilies contorted to death and demoralized," Miller writes in one caption. Yup, that sounds familiar. "But look," he adds, "at these glorious, bodacious bombshells!" Indeed, he has unleashed their inner divas. The book's glamour is inescapable, and there's nothing mundane about Miller's prose: "The best way to make an arrangement is to think about sex or listen to one of your favorite songs." Lewis uses flowers easily found at nurseries and markets in his boldly romantic arrangements. Be inspired. Or be lazy: Prop the book open on your coffee table and turn the pages to enjoy a new bouquet every day. For those of you who want more guidance, I recommend THE FLOWER WORKSHOP: Lessons in Arranging Blooms, Branches, Fruits, and Foraged Materials (Ten Speed, $25), by Ariella Chezar with Julie Michaels. Chezar, whose creations have an easy sweetness, is an accomplished designer who can count the White House as a client. She likes to work, she says, quoting the poet Mary Oliver, until "I can hear the almost unbearable sound of the roses singing." Surely that's reason enough to go snipping. Or shopping. Ask not what you can do for your plants - even though they're always clamoring for attention. Instead, Stephen Harris, a curator of the Oxford University Herbaria, asks another question in WHAT HAVE PLANTS EVER DONE FOR US: Western Civilization in Fifty Plants (Bodleian Library/University of Chicago, $25). Probably way more than you ever appreciated. Taking a chronological approach, he begins with all the things we should know about barley (your shoe size "is determined by the old measure of a barleycorn"). Among the book's tidbits of information: For over 600 years the English "fixed the weight of a penny as 32 grains of wheat." The domesticated silk moth is such a picky eater it will tolerate only one food plant, white mulberry. Woad gave us a dark blue dye until competition from indigo edged it out - and it took its revenge by becoming a serious agricultural weed. In 1982, tobacco became the first artificially genetically modified plant. After heroin and cocaine, tobacco is the third-most-addictive commonly used drug. "Tobacco," Harris notes, "has probably killed more of us than any other plant on the planet." All this makes for great bedtime reading. Stow this book away for winter evenings, when your plants have gone dormant and you want to count the ways in which you love them. While you may never have occasion to build your own "debris hut," make your own kimchi or experiment with kokedama (the "moss ball" style of Japanese bonsai), you can still wander through the pages of A WILDER LIFE: A Season-by-Season Guide to Getting in Touch With Nature (Artisan, paper, $29.95), by Celestine Maddy with Abbye Churchill, in awe and appreciation. Maddy and Churchill are responsible for the beautiful and inspiring magazine called Wilder, which reads like a throwback to the old days of handcrafted paper and ink. Amplifying that spirit, "A Wilder Life" urges readers to garden with a purpose - to stew, brew, can and pot. When winter comes around and you find that the knees of your jeans have given out, there's a nifty chapter on how to embroider a patch, sashiko style, that will fortify both jeans and you. Nature isn't just a screen saver. It's a soul saver. Of course it would be a poet who has the most powerful insights into why we garden. Reading WHAT IS A GARDEN? (University of South Carolina, $29.95), by W. S. Merwin, is akin to sitting at the feet of a wise elder. I'm grateful to the photographer and filmmaker Larry Cameron for bringing this book about, and for sharing the enchantment of Merwin's Hawaiian garden. This former poet laureate of the United States went to Maui some 40 years ago to study with a Zen teacher. Later, looking for a place to make a home, he encountered a desolate landscape defined by ridges of dry grass and scrub guavas. A hundred years earlier, these acres had been deforested by cattle ranchers and sugar planters. "Nothing will grow here" was the message scribbled in the local records. Still, as Merwin stood under a wild mango at the edge of a creek bed, "I felt a wish to have more to do with it." That's about as humble - and proper - a description as I've encountered for that mystical feeling of connection to a plot of land. "A garden is a relation," Merwin writes, "which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished." At first, Merwin meant to use the land to "restore a section of indigenous Hawaiian forest," but he learned it was an impossible task. "Only a forest can restore a forest- Our human destructions are often irreparable." What did come to fruition, though, was a forest garden - "a kind of fiction" - beginning with hundreds of thickly planted palms, "a project to grow all the native Hawaiian species I could, to help preserve them." At the beginning, palms all looked alike to him. Eventually, Merwin planted 850 species. You can see the appeal: "There is a whole lore of coconuts that recounts the birth of some of them, in Tahiti, from the heads of children who died of hunger, and tells of others that grew from the heads of fishermen who had dangled their hair in the sea as bait, and of some that sprang from the heads of gods." Monkeypods, "planted as seedlings no taller than chives," now tower over Merwin's house. Jasmine, plumeria, banana trees, begonias, heliconias, hibiscus and ginger took root, overhung with Spanish moss. This is, wonderfully, an old man's book. It wanders, it's repetitive, but with each retelling of a story, new details emerge. Just as paths should bend and curve to slow your walk through a garden, so the curves in Merwin's prose settle our minds into a deeper consideration of what we're reading. "It is an enchantment, all of it," he writes of his garden, "from the daydreaming to the digging." Recently, after some long days in my own woodlands, I lay in Savasana (corpse pose, my favorite) on my mat, aching, at the end of a yoga class. Our lovely teacher asked us to let go of the intentions we had brought with us - because we were finished. "There's nothing more to do here," she declared. I thought about that as I read through these garden books: how all of us, in this worldly garden we share, cherish and cultivate, must learn to accept, at day's end, that we have done what we can - even as we're about to get up and do what we can all over again tomorrow. Let our wise elder honor us with a final thought. "A garden," Merwin writes, "is made of hope, which contributes to its pleasure and its fragility. It cannot be proven, nor clutched, nor hurried." Dominique browning works for the Environmental Defense Fund as the senior director of Moms Clean Air Force.

Between them, Belsinger and Tucker draw on 100-plus years of experience gardening and cooking in this guide for gardeners who like to cook . . . cooks who want . . . the best tasting culinary herbs . . . and the everyday herbal enthusiast. With lavish color photographs throughout, this clearly written culinary herbal goes beyond sage and thyme, even venturing into sensory experiences of nonmedicinal herbs as it addresses 97 varieties, including Cuban oregano (flavors salsa), lemon balm (adds a lemony spark to sauces, cakes, syrups, veggies, and more), and orache (adds mild spinach taste to salads). The authors provide instructions on how to grow, harvest, preserve, and store herbs, and in the Master Recipes Using Culinary Herbs section, they offer directions for preparing basic herb syrups, vinegars, aromatic pastes, and butters, all used to enhance a wide range of foods. The back matter of metric conversions and lists of resources and suggested readings accommodate varying interest levels, making this a book with wide appeal.--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2015 Booklist

The Modern-Day Culinary Herbal: An Introduction Why do we put herbs into our soups, casseroles, desserts, and beverages? Because herbs add depth of flavor to any food and enhance and round out aromas and tastes. Herbs are broadly regarded as green plants that are used for culinary, medicinal, and ornamental purposes. Generally, herbs are not used on their own as a dish, but combined with other foods to add flavor, nutrients, and medicinal virtues. We practice all three of these uses every day, and we are passionate about using herbs in the kitchen. For decades, we have been wooed and enchanted by these inimitable fragrant and tasty plants. We know them by their appearance, their leaves, their shapes and color, and their flowers and seeds--and we know them intimately through sensory experience. We have written this book to share our knowledge about growing and cooking with herbs, so that you can cultivate these various plants and create and enjoy foods graced by them. In this culinary herbal, we go beyond popular herbs such as parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and venture farther afield. While we do include many herbs that are easily cultivated in our gardens, we also discuss a number of wild herbs often considered weeds that we forage from our backyards, meadows and fields, and the woods' edge. We also include plants that are not typically considered herbs. For example, although elder is considered a shrub or tree, garlic is a bulb, and arugula or chile peppers are usually found in the vegetable garden, these plants are grown and harvested for seasoning. We have gathered together this collection of herbs specifically for their culinary attributes. We give you descriptive details of cultivation, aroma, and taste for nearly 100 herbs, as well as examples of the many foods and dishes in which they are used. Ancient herbals were the medicinal manuals for their eras. They offered recipes for treating all sorts of maladies as well as for tonics, and some of the plants were even toxic and dangerous to consume. Depending on the author, plant descriptions were sometimes included in these herbals. This book is a modern-day herbal. Rather than exploring the medicinal properties of herbs, this book is a gardening-and-cooking culinary herbal, focusing on the smells and tastes offered by certain plants. We have sorted through many species and varieties of culinary herbs and selected our favorites to cultivate for cooking. Having spent a large part of our lives growing, smelling, tasting, and eating herbs, we offer our opinions on which herbs lend the best fragrance and flavor. All About Smell and Taste Everyone talks about how things taste, but we don't often hear people discussing how a certain dish smells. And yet flavor is derived from both taste and smell. Smell is not only a precursor to flavor, but it is an integral part of flavor. Without smell, you cannot sense and savor the full flavor of a food. In fact, flavor is about 90 percent smell. Here is a simple experiment you can do right now to understand this proposition. Pick an herb leaf, but do not rub it or sniff it. Hold your nose closed with your fingers and do not let go. While holding your nose, take a little nibble of the herb leaf. Do you taste anything? No? While still holding your nose, take another nibble to be sure. Same results? Now let go of your nose and breathe. You will be amazed to experience the herb fragrance and flavor filling your nose and mouth. Now you understand the smell-flavor relationship. We do this experiment with children and adults to show them the power of our olfactory sense. Try it with your friends and family. In our olfactory memories, we each have tens of thousands of smell memories, beginning when we were born. An infant instinctively knows who its mother is by her scent. We know when our neighbors are grilling outdoors by the odor of lighted charcoal or searing meat, and we know when they are mowing the lawn by the aroma of freshly cut grass wafting through our open windows. When driving down the road, your nose lets you know when you go by an Italian restaurant or a fried chicken diner. You don't even have to think about it--it is an imbedded olfactory memory. While each individual has innumerable smell memories, we have many fewer taste memories. While most of us have learned that our tongue has four kinds of taste buds--sweet, sour, salty, and bitter--a few other cultures add a few more tastes. In India, proponents of the Ayurvedic system include "pungent" as a taste, and we agree heartily with this, since we consider garlic, chile peppers, and even mustard as pungent. To this taste might be added the opposite--cool--like the menthol in peppermint. And then there is umami , which is a Japanese word that might be translated as "a pleasant, savory taste" or "a deliciousness" that some describe as brothy. Umami is recognized by our taste receptors that taste glutamates (such as MSG, monosodium glutamate) and is found in foods or food combinations like aged or fermented foods, soy and fish sauces, seafood, cured meats, mushrooms, seaweed, and some vegetables and cheeses. We have tasted umami in recipes combining some of these ingredients, soups, and even fine wines. And sometimes, "mouthfeel" is added as a taste by some researchers. Mouthfeel is the curious coating that occurs in the mouth when you consume lactone-rich foods, such as coconut dishes. So, let's say we add pungent/cool and umami to the basic four tastes, and that gives us six tastes. When you think about it, that isn't very many, but every food and every herb that we eat can be categorized into these six basic tastes or a combination of them. By adding an herb like sorrel to a soup or sauce, its tart, lemony flavor and mineral salts will add a sour and salty flavor to the dish. And adding chile peppers or garlic to a dish will make it pungent. Since herbs contain concentrated flavor and natural minerals, we can often use less salt in foods containing them. Today's society craves sweet and salt, and fast foods have exacerbated the overuse of these two tastes. When we create a dish, we look for a balance of flavors and try to incorporate all of the tastes--sweet and salty, bitter and sour, and pungent/cool and umami--so that we can enjoy the full range of sensory stimuli. With the other dimensions of flavor offered by herbs, we do not need so much sweet and salt in our diets. In addition, bitter and sour stimulate our digestive juices, to aid in digestion. When we smell an herb, we rub its leaves to release the essential oils and inhale deeply, usually with our eyes closed. We do this again and again, so we can capture the bouquet in our olfactory receptors. The same goes for tasting: We take a nibble and let the taste roll across our tongue and permeate our taste buds, and we taste again. We find that the more we do this, the more in tune we are with the sensory experience, and our senses of smell and taste become heightened. In this manner, we can create for ourselves the utmost sensory pleasures. We also feel that anyone can do this if they take the time to smell and taste and think about it. The more one practices, the more acute your senses become. About the Book Through the years, we have cultivated many herbs. We have our favorites, which are tried and true, and we share them with you in the book. This way, if you are a beginning or even a somewhat experienced gardener or just have a small space, you can choose the best herb plants to grow. The main section of this book includes profiles of selected culinary herbs. In these plant descriptions, we explore how each individual herb smells and tastes. We mention foods or dishes from around the globe that highlight or go well with that herb's flavor. We discuss whether the herb is best used fresh or cooked, and how to prepare it. Each plant profile also provides information on cultivating that particular herb, and offers suggestions on harvesting and preserving it. For some herbs, like chervil or lovage, we recommend just growing the straight species. For other herbs, like the basils or mints, we suggest five or six favorites. While we have not included plants that primarily have medicinal applications, the culinary herbs, besides adding flavor, often have medicinal virtues, so we occasionally mention some of those attributes. Although we have included many tender perennial herbs, we have not included tropical herbs and spices, since these plants need to grow in a hot climate or a greenhouse to produce flowers, seeds, roots, or tubers. We have greenhouses and we have grown turmeric, cardamom, tea, coffee, allspice, and other tropicals. Even with a greenhouse, though, we have not seen them flower and produce seed or fruit; we grow them mostly for the pleasure of having them. Among the selected culinary herbs, we have included those that are sometimes called potherbs. These plant materials, such as nettles, lamb's quarters, and purslane, are on the borderline between common culinary herbs and vegetables, and can be gathered from the wild or cultivated. They are often used for seasoning, but also their leaves, stems, and flowers can be cooked and used for food by themselves, and many potherbs are excellent additions to salads. After the plant profiles section of the book, we provide general information on growing herbs. We explain how to start herbs from seed, cuttings, and layering (bending down branches and covering with soil so they root), how to grow herbs in containers or indoors, and how to maintain healthy herbs. We then discuss particulars on preserving the harvest, including what techniques you can use, from drying to freezing. We also offer our master recipes for capturing, storing, and cooking with the essence of herbs.   Excerpted from The Culinary Herbal: Growing and Preserving 97 Flavorful Herbs by Susan Belsinger, Arthur O. Tucker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.