Tag Archives: basil

The Good Herb Puzzle

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mintHerbs! What’s not to love? Because they’re the leafy part of the plant (rather than the bark, seed or root, which are considered spices), they’re one of the first signs of spring to grace the dinner table. Seriously, if there’s no basil plant sunning itself in your garden or on your windowsill by now, remedy that oversight; it will repay you a thousand times over in herb butter and pesto this summer.

But I digress. Test how well you really know your herbs by trying to name the correct one for each of the fun facts listed below. This is a tough one, guys, so if you manage to get even half, consider yourself a perfect herbivore.

  1. A belief in ancient Greece held that this herb (whose name comes for the Greek word for king) would only grow if you screamed curses while planting the seeds.
  2. An English tradition is to plant large patches of this herb as a playground for fairies.
  3. Some people have a gene that causes them to experience this herb as having a nasty soapy flavor.
  4. Some mothers take this herb to help with lactation, but a sweet side effect is that it can make their sweat and urine smell like maple syrup.
  5. This flowering herb prized mostly for its scent was thought to protect the wearer from the bubonic plague when worn around the wrist.
  6. In ancient Rome, this was the most important medicinal herb, so important that our word for it comes from the Latin term meaning “to save.”
  7. This herb is associated with the Virgin Mary, because there’s a story that the flowers of the plant got their color after she placed her blue shawl on one of the bushes to dry it.
  8. This herb has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 1000 BC, and Mexicans like it so much that they call it simply yerba buena, meaning “good herb.”

Don’t scroll down or click “Continue” until you’re reedy for the answers! Continue reading →

Tamarind Time Machine

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tamarind tofu

I didn’t even have to squeeze anything out of a sock this time!

A lot of the time, my days in Cambodia feel very far away. Going through my old notebooks is like walking into a weird time portal, full of interviews with people I don’t remember (“Question: how long does it take you to paint a single tuk-tuk?”), odd to-do lists (“Find copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for Savuth”) and discarded lyrics for a comedic folk song entitled “All My Linga Wants Is Your Yoni” (funnier than it sounds, I swear).

But with the publication of this cool anthology, which includes some of my Cambodian musings, I was looking for a way to pay homage to and feel reconnected with the Kingdom of Wonder. That’s when I went hunting through my notes for the recipe for Tofu with Tamarind, Chili and Basil. I scored it while writing a weekly column for The Phnom Penh Post called The Learning Curve in which I would try to learn traditional Khmer pursuits and then make fun of myself while I bumbled my way through them. Looking back, I see that I must have irritated a lot of busy people while researching this column, but they tended to be unfailingly good-natured about it, and Oeurm Pav at Arun Restaurant was no exception.

But would I be able to remember enough about interviewing her to recreate my favorite Khmer dish? It was a long time ago, my notes were sketchy, and even in optimal conditions, I’m lazy about measurements. However, I was able to purchase tamarind paste in an Indian grocery store in Queens, whereas in Cambodia, I had to boil the tamarind and squeeze it through one of Jason’s socks for lack of a cheesecloth. Perhaps giving undue weight to this head start, I decided that I could just intuit my way through the rest of it. Continue reading →

The Plant Sale Is On!

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wagon

Loadin' up our wagon...

Maybe if you’re a fan of the Farmer’s Almanac, you know that it’s time to plant by waiting until leaves are the size of squirrels’ ears or something like that, but as a New Yorker, I know it’s time to break out the trowel when the Brooklyn Botanic Garden holds its annual plant sale. And that time is upon us. Come on, how often do you get to run over old ladies with a Radio Flyer red wagon and race for plants like its some kind of great pioneer land grab?

plant saleThe plant sale has just about any plant you can think of, from serious landscaping items to tiny, delicate potted orchids. Personally, I think the geraniums at the sale are second none (they bloom for months and have been known to withstand blizzards), and I scored some other pretty flowers for our windows. On the food side of things, our haul wasn’t quite as large this year, since Jason has been into saving seeds. Even so, we’re not always the best at self-restraint. Jason added to his rapidly increasing stock of tomato varieties with a Sungold and a Bush Goliath. And the little basil market packs for $2.50 are great. So if you’re in the area, get out there and grab a wagon–the sale runs through tomorrow at 1 p.m.

And if you score any unusual or particularly promising plants, whether its at the BBG or elsewhere, tell us all about it in the comments section. Take your marks…get set…garden!

When You Just Can’t Get That Garden Going ’til July

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A reader in North Carolina posted this comment last week:

Love the articles! I’m buying a house and will finally have a yard to start a garden. I’d love to get your opinion on the best times of the year to plant certain foods and some that would be easier for a first time gardener.

Thanks!

So we’re going to oblige.  Because we’re cool like that.  And believe that if you have the means to buy a house, you most definitely should rock a garden in the backyard.

This is a cool photo that has nothing to do with the content of this blog post

The best way to find out what plants will succeed when planted mid-Summer is to check with a local plant nursery or find region-specific info on the internet.  Since a plant’s suitability to your garden depends significantly on the temperature and on frost, the answer to your question varies depending on where you live.

Also, a good rule of thumb for less experienced gardeners is to buy seedlings, rather than seeds, to plant.  Doing this will give you an added advantage in that you’ll save time that you don’t want to spare since we’re already well into the season.

So, some recs…

Tomatoes! Good, homegrown, heirloom tomatoes are about the best thing you’ll ever taste.  They typically take up to two months to produce fruit, but if you pick up some seedlings at a nursery and get them into the ground, you’ll probably be able to start harvesting by mid-September, only about a month beyond when the “normal” tomato crop comes in.  The plants will keep producing well into Fall; I routinely continue to harvest tomatoes in Brooklyn in mid-October. Continue reading →