Basil, sweet basil!

by Mary Jo

I grew up in the farm country of Western New York and had a fine vegetable garden, but tomatoes were basically just another vegetable, less prized than sweet corn or squash or potatoes.  There were none in my garden. In retrospect, I think that being so far north meant that tomatoes didn't grow as well as they do farther south.

I formulated this theory after moving to Maryland, where tomatoes are very nearly a religion. <G>  Perfect, juicy, sun-ripened Maryland tomatoes are much sought after.  Locations of farm stands with great tomatoes are greedily exchanged.

And where there are tomatoes, there should be basil.  Being a northerner, I didn't make the connection until some years back I read a piece in the Baltimore Sun by a local Italian-American journalist saying that he grew basil in his back yard because people in his family had grown their own basil for centuries.  

Being historically inclined, I thought that sounded pretty interesting, and soon I noticed that in spring, all the supermarkets seemed to have basil plants in little peat pots, ready to pop into the ground as soon as it's warm enough.  So I planted some basil in the flowerboxes on my deck, and now I'm a convert.  Fresh basil is AMAZING.

Basil is possibly native to India, where it's been cultivated for over 5000 years, but it had spread into Europe by the time of the ancient Greeks.  It's a member of the mint family, which probably explains the wonderful scent.  There are many
variations, but most common is sweet basil, which has been known as "the royal herb" or "the king of herbs."

Dried basil loses most of its flavor and is reminiscent of hay, but the fresh variety makes many things taste wonderful.  A classic Italian dish is caprese salad, which is fresh sliced tomatoes, ditto fresh sliced mozzarella, and fresh basil, seasoned with a little salt and olive oil and maybe a bit of fresh ground pepper.  If all the ingredients aren't fresh, forget it, but if they are, the dish is sublime and the red, white, and green colors echo the Italian flag in a nicely patriotic way.

But basil is good in so many ways.  I like to chop some fresh leaves up and scramble them with an egg and if I've feeling decadent, some grated cheese. Lovely.  The Mayhem Consultant is half Italian, and he once mentioned a salad his family members made that was sliced tomatoes, chopped fresh basil, olive oil, and salt and pepper.  I gave it a try, and now it's a summer staple around here.

It's a romance, really.  Tomatoes and basil, born to be together!  <G>  Bruschetta, which is chopped tomatoes and basil and a little olive oil on toasted bread is another simple taste superstar.

But basil is splendid in other applications, too.  I discovered pesto sauce some years ago when a friend said her basil was going crazy in her garden so she'd decided to make pesto, and she handed me a small container with green stuff sloshing around inside.  It was love at first taste.  <G>  

These days prepared pesto is probably found in most supermarkets (at least, it is in Maryland), and it's very versatile.  As Wikipedia says, it's traditionally made of "crushed garlic, European pine nuts, coarse salt, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano (Parmesan cheese) and pecorino sardo (cheese made from sheep's milk), all blended with olive oil."  Wonderful tossed with pasta--I love it with tortellini--it can also be served with fish, eggs, and other things.   Someone somewhere is probably making pesto or basil ice cream, and if so, I'd like to taste it.

I realize that many of you already know what I've been prattling about, but I like talking about my summer basil.  <G>  That's it surrounded by flowers in one of my deck flower boxes.

Fresh herbs in general are a wonderful thing, and even if it isn't practical for you to grow any of your own, they're now widely available commercially.   Nothing perks up a dish like fresh herbs and many are easy to grow: oregano, chives, thyme, sage, and more.  So if you haven't tried growing your own herbs, give fresh basil a try--you won't regret it!

Do you grow your own herbs?  If so, which ones?  And if you don't grow them, do you cook with them when you can?

Mary Jo

Comments

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

We use parsley, dill, and thyme on a regular basis. In our food, I mean. Basil, not so often, although it canbe found in supermarkets. You'll find basil in our orthodox churches. Priests use bunches of basil to spray holy water over the crowds. I am not a church-goer myself. I don't eat basil with pleasure because it reminds me of churches. You may think I have no faith, but I do. It's just that my own belief in God does not 'require' my presence in church, nor does it make me obey its impositions. I'd rather pray in the mountains or in a forest. Priests would probably call me heathen. Lol

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

Are you interested in learning how I eat parsley, dill, and thyme? Parsley is used both fresh and boiled. We use the whole plant in our soup, but the leaves, in particular, are also used in salads or as ornaments for almost any food. They are very healthy and most people love their flavour. Dill is not used only for pickles. I often make a cheese cream spread with fresh dill and sometimes I fill tomatoes or bell peppers with it. I also add dill to scrambled eggs or omelettes. Dill - either fresh or dried - can be added to our sour soup, called bortsch or borsch (which is not necessarily red or pink). Borsch can be made with a large variety of herbs and vegetables, according to people's taste and depending on the season. Needless to say we add thyme to it, too. :) Dried thyme is often added to our meat, especially pork or lamb.

[Janice]

I don't cook any more than I can help (which is breakfast generally), but my favorite service market does, and their tabouli with fresh parsley and tomatoes is addictive. When I do make something myself, I avoid salt and sugar, but I use considerable pepper. I am very lucky to live within a few minutes of several very good fresh produce markets now. My days of eating canned stuff or phoning out for a pizza are gone, and I feel better for it.

[Gail]

I've been growing and cooking with herbs for at least 40 years. I love how they improve my cooking with so little effort. The first herb I grew was mint. I was ignorant of mint's growing habits at the time, so put 5 plants along the back of my house. It spread like crazy! Our yard smelled good all summer from my husband mowing my mint out of the yard. I haven't made that mistake again, but still grow lots of mint.

[Lillian Marek]

I was away from home during June, and when I got back, all the farmsteads and nurseries were out of herb plants, so I'm limited to buying my fresh herbs by the bunch. Which is fine, but I miss going out to snip off as much as I want.
It's been hideously hot lately, here and everywhere, I guess, so I had salad caprese yesterday—the perfect hot day meal.

[Linda S.]

I make my own pesto and freeze it which is, as you rightly note, the only way to preserve the fresh basil smell and taste. Although I took a gardening break this summer, I usually grow tomatoes and basil. We have sage and rosemary, too, and those herbs are perennials in our climate. I use rosemary with olive oil and garlic when I roast red potatoes. The sage is mostly ornamental.

[Patricia Franzino]

I love fresh basil and taking the leaves from the stem to put over a pasta meal. The smell is divine.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Oana-Maria Uliu, you have plenty of "heathen" company enjoying the spirituality of those forests! I didn't realize that Orthodox priests used basil for sprinkling holy water, but I can understand how the scent associations would not be good if they remind you of being cooped up inside. Parsley, dill, and thyme are also wonderful, so at least you're not herb-deprived!

[Christina M]

My ex is growing herbs and vegetables in pots and containers: basil, bush basil (small plant), oregano, sage, savory, purple basil, chocolate mint, rosemary, chives, cherry tonatos, Roma tomatos, bell peppers, eggplant. He told me to stop by and pick what I want, whenever I want. I used basil in a dish I tried to make that I had at Carrabas (wish I remembered the name). Wasn't exactly the same but it was tasty.

I heated fresh basil and oregano in olive oil, added diced onion and garlic and sautéd them until soft and onion was translucent. Then I added 2-3 inch julienned yellow squash and zucchini, cooking them until somewhat translucent. At the end I added halved cherry tomatoes and a little more basil, cooking for another 2-3 minutes. Quantities used were eyedballed for the number of people I was cooking for.

[Mary Jo Putney]

I always have fresh parsley in my refrigerator--it's widely available in supermarkets here all year around, and it always adds that wonderful fresh green flavors to almost everything, as you say. I like dill, but don't grow it and don't use it as much as it deserves. Thyme is also good, but it can be a bit intense. It dries well, though.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Janice, I'm with you--I don't do much cooking from scratch anymore, but I'm grateful for all the great supermarkets in my area!

Fresh tabouli......yes!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Mint will take over given a chance, but the scents are SO lovely! I wasn't surprised to learn that basil is in the mint family because the smell is divine.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Now I'm thinking I need to get some fresh mozzarella so I can have a salad caprese, too. *G*

I'm sorry you missed the basil pot season--there is something sumptuous about going out and clipping one's own fresh herbs in the garden or on the deck.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Oooh, rosemary and roasted red potatoes, a favorite of mine! I don't use sage as much, but it also has a lovely scent and where it works, it's terrific.

[Mary Jo Putney]

When I'm watering my deck plants, I always take longer at the basil just to enjoy that fragrance.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Christina M, what a very useful ex you have! I know there are many mints, but I never heard of chocolate mint. *G*

That herb and vegetable dish you made sounds AMAZING! I must try that. Thanks.

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

There's more to it, I'm afraid, than the feeling of being cooped up. I grew up during Ceausescu's regime, when religion was almost taboo. Some people would keep going to church, especially in the countryside, but I lived in a town and my father was the manager of a transport company, which implied being a member of the Communist Party and therefore under close scrutiny of the Securitate, so in our family no one talked about religion. We kept some Christmas and Easter rituals, but only at home, in strict secrecy, but I was little and I thought they were games. Granny would take me to visit churches occasionally, so I could see the beautiful icons, yet I had no idea what they represented. But back then churches were also where people would keep their dead before the funeral, so churches got connected to the idea of death and grief in my mind - and the connection stuck.

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

After the so-called Revolution we had in 1989 (I was 11 at the time) I started educating myself regarding religion and I developed a personal concept of God, despite the fact that - as a baby - I was baptised a Christian Orthodox.

[Renea]

Today one of my coworkers brought in some fresh basil to share if we would like. She had too much to use. I was just trying to decide if I would like to take some home, so now I KNOW I will. Thanks for all the information!!!

[Sue McCormick]

I am trying to find a space in the house to grow some indoor herbs, because I'm not up to outdoor gardening anymore. Basil, flat-leafe parsley, rosemary, and mint would be my choices.

As I was reading your post, a reading memory drifted up — a modern romance (Jayne Ann Krentz?) in which the heroine is saving the hero's family situation while she is attempting to form a pesto home industry. It was the first time I had heard of pesto, and I immediately tried som.

[Susanna Kearsley]

We always had backyard gardens when I was growing up here in central Canada -- even tomatoes, which did surprisingly well (though they always attracted the persistent green caterpillars called "tomato hornworms" that my father had to pick off all the plants by hand) (ick).

I don't remember many herbs in our earliest gardens, but they gradually made their appearance and my mother eventually became a great lover of lemon thyme, and we ALWAYS had a crop of chives close by the kitchen door, so we could clip them fresh as needed for our boiled new potatoes in the summertime.

I'll have to try your tomato and basil salad, it sounds wonderful!

[MaryJoPutney]

No wonder your feelings about the church are complicated! I think that reading and studying and meditating are good ways to create one's personal spiritual path.

[MaryJoPutney]

Sue McCormick, a budding pesto maker indeed sounds like Jayne Ann Krentz. I'm sure her descriptions were so luscious that no one could resist finding some pesto of their own. *G*

[MaryJoPutney]

Ooooh, chives, wonderful! I have clumps of them growing here. Not only delicious, but lovely when they bloom in last spring. And no better way to serve them than with boiled new potatoes.

[Anne Gracie]

I love fresh basil, too, Mary Jo, and so do the bugs in my garden, so I'm not always successful at growing it. But I buy fresh bunches all the time, and if anyone wants the secret to keeping fresh basil fresh and not droopy or with blackened leaves (as happens if you put it in the fridge) here's a post I wrote about it: http://www.annegracie.com/fresh-basil/

I often make fresh pesto — the supermarket stuff is okay, but nowhere near as good as fresh. I add basil leaves to all my green salads and of course, as you say, anything with tomatoes.

I grow a few herbs — thyme, parsley, sage, chives, sorrel, mint, of course, including the variety that makes the best mint tea, a clump of lemon grass, and a small bay tree.

[Nancy M]

Have terrible luck growing things. Even the mint didn't do well when I had the house and yard though it did fine in my m-I-l's yard just a few miles away. Now I try growing some on the balcony in containers without success. Bought Chocolate mint and rosemary both of which died as did the basil. Didn't even have any luck with the catnip for the cat. Wasn't dried basil the source of basilicum powder or paste used as medicine?
I keep trying to grow rosemary. Friends have a four foot rosemary plant by their porch which ahs survived snow and ice.
Never learned to cook with herbs but had a mixture of rosemary and other ingredients that I used to addd to a variety of dishes.

[Michelle H]

What a lovely post, Mary Jo. Being a fan of cooking magazines, and the recipe portions of any other magazines, I have always been 'compelled' to try and grow herbs. The thought sounded so 'Martha/Julia/Jacque' etc. And I tried. But somehow, the Day Job kept me from actually going back to the recipes I wanted to try, or keep watch on the herb garden and set myself up for failure. (My basil would always bolt to legginess and flower)

I'd seen lots of pesto recipes that intrigued me but they required a lot of basil, and basil by the bunch is cost prohibitive here. But then this very special thing happened. My neighbor was leaving for their family vacation and (without asking first) brought me AN ENTIRE grocery bag full of basil...really fresh and gorgeous. Well, I looked up a pesto recipe pronto. Oh my. Now I'm so hooked. And because we're not big pasta eaters here, I've discovered some ways we love using it over and over without getting tired of it

It's fantastic spread onto a salmon filet before grilling it, (and I'm sure it would work beautifully baked too,) using it as a marinade for chicken breasts, flatbread pizza, toasted on slices of french bread.

No longer having the the day job, I'm trying to use more and more other fresh herbs. I loved everyone else's input and ideas. Thanks.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Renea, have fun experimenting with your basil bonanza!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Isn't in amazing the difference fresh herbs make, Anne? It sounds like you have a very nice herb garden. I'm particularly impressed by the bay tree!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Nancy, it's lucky you have other talents! I've looked into basilicum powder a couple of times, but think maybe Georgette Heyer invented it. Do you have more information on it?

[Mary Jo Putney]

Oooh, Michelle H, Basil bonanza! So glad you've had the chance to play with it. Yes, pesto is lovely on fish, and many other things.

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

Found it :) Google up 'apothecary basil powder' - on www.englishapothecaryrewards.com you'll find what uses sweet basil and holy basil powder has in medicine, namely in cases of ulcer or diabetes.

[Anne Gracie]

Bay trees are very easy to grow here, mary Jo.
Mine is in a pot, but a friend of mine recently cut hers down as it was getting too big.

[Brenda J Erickson]

I have 4 kinds of basil, parsley, chives, tarragon, rosemary, sage, dill, rue and winter savory. Two basils I grow for the bees. They have wonderful blossoms and the bees swarm them all summer.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Thank you, Oana-Maria. I'll do this later today. You may have solved a Regency mystery. *G*

[Mary Jo Putney]

Brenda--

FOUR kinds of basil, two just for the bees! I wish I was your neighbor. *G* I could help with over-supplies of those herbs you grow that I don't, likedill, tarragon, rue, and winter savory. (I've never cooked with rue--though some recipes have turned me rueful...)

[J]

Hate to admit it... but I have lead an insulated or is that isolated life... I have never learned the "How to's" of fresh herbs.. the growing/harvesting/preparing...

[Mary Jo Putney]

J--not too late to give fresh herbs a try! Most good supermarkets have fresh herbs in the produce section. Some fresh basil, chopped and added to scrambled eggs. Or sprinkled over fresh sliced tomatoes. Yum! And no special training required. *G*

[Judi Abbott]

Nothing better than Insalata tre colore (I add sliced avocados) year round. I make my own pesto and freeze some. Always welcome at a potluck is pesto over pasta with fresh grated Parmesan Reggiano. I also grow Rosemary, savory, tarragon, chive and the knew hot spicy basil and lots of hot chilis. Have to bring them in up here in NH.

[Michelle H]

One last silly thing....end of summer last year, and in Texas that would be October. I laid in all the supplies in that I don't always keep on hand in order to make one last batch of pesto...it freezes like a dream! Then I went out to cut the basil. (I had just seen it the day before!) ALL the leaves were gone, leaving the stems. It was a classic chin drop to the chest thing. First shock, then I was really really *&%$ off, then I just wanted to cry. How dare some little varmint come eat my basil Well, I tried to calm myself down in the hopes that since the stems were still there, they would regrow before the season was really done. Well, the next day the stems were gone.

So this year I planted a ton of it. And in a very tall raised bed, but who knows what ate it last year??? Any 'varmints' I can think of around here, raccoons, possums, and dare I say it; cats and squirrels could get anywhere they please in they wanted to so who am I kidding? Ha.

And by the way we LOVE cats, and currently own one so no need to scorn my pet preferences.

[Michelle H]

Oh b-r-o-t-h-e-r. My editing....bad me.

[Mary Jo Putney]

My sympathies, Michelle H--I'd be outraged, too! I love cats--have three--but that doesn't mean I'd be happy if one ate my basil. (They couldn't, they're indoor cats, but I've seen a squirrel in the deck boxes where I grow my basil.) I hope your raised beds are sending the varmints to more accessible destruction.

[Mary Jo Putney]

One of the many joys of pesto is how well it freezes so it can be enjoyed all year round. Let me know the next potluck so I can show up with a fork. *G*

[Michelle H]

So far...so good. :D