Speaking of 660 Curries (I never seem to shut up about it, do I), I recently tried a recipe from the back of the book, where he puts the curry accompaniments. It was a basic chapati, or roti, recipe, but with the addition of fenugreek leaves. These are one of those specialty items that we bought some time ago but then seldom used, so I was thrilled to find something new to do with them. And I was startled at how good it was – the leaves perfume the chapatis with a fresh green scent, and also seem to make the dough softer and better to eat. Amazing. I make chapatis all the time, but this variation is going to become part of the regular rotation.

I don’t measure too carefully when I make chapati. To make breads for the two of us (about 6 small chapati) I generally use about a half cup of whole wheat flour, a half cup of all-purpose, a pinch of salt, and maybe half a cup of warm water, then adjust with more flour or water as necessary to make a smooth dough. For the fenugreek breads, I added 1/4 cup of dried fenugreek leaves, soaked in cold water for 15 minutes then drained before mixing into the dough. If I had fresh or frozen leaves (which I’ve never seen anywhere), then it would have been half a cup of chopped leaves. I kneaded the dough for a bit, rolled it into a ball and let it rest about half an hour under its mixing bowl.

When the rest of the dinner was ready, I cut the dough into six pieces, rolled them out into thin circles, plopped them onto a hot griddle, turning once, then put them directly onto a gas flame to poof them up. We usually just cook them entirely on the griddle, but since I had a spare burner available I thought I’d try the direct-on-flame approach, and it worked really well. So often when we cook Indian food, though, every burner is in use, so this may not happen again soon.

The breads rested in a basket lined with a clean dishtowel while we set the table, and were perfectly soft and chewy. It was difficult not to overeat. Plus the house smelled wonderfully of fenugreek all evening.

I really don’t know why Americans don’t eat rabbit. There’s definitely a factor of “oh, it’s too CUTE to eat” which is part of why we don’t eat much lamb as a nation, either. But it’s really hard to find rabbit in grocery stores – we asked once at our usual market and I think they could special order it frozen for us if we gave them enough notice, and it cost an arm and a leg. Weird.

So when a friend of ours, a local farmer, asked if we wanted to take one of the rabbits she’s been shooting to keep them out of her vegetables, we said Definitely. Even before we received the rabbit, I started looking through my British and Mediterranean cookbooks for possible recipes. We haven’t had much experience cooking wild game of any sort, so I wanted to get a feel for the most common treatments. Rabbit isn’t a strongly gamey meat, but it’s still liable to be stronger-tasting than, say, a farm-raised chicken, and the meat is very dense and low in fat, so it requires some care in preparation.

Braising seemed to be the way to go, although I did find some instructions on roasting (best for young bunnies), as well as some advice on barbecuing (just the rabbit saddles for that, apparently). We weren’t sure of the age and potential toughness of this rabbit, so I picked a really tasty-sounding braise from the beautiful cookbook Olives and Oranges involving lemon peel and fresh rosemary, which seemed like it would make anything delicious.

First we cut up the rabbit. It had been thoroughly cleaned already, so we just had to whack it into pieces. I was keeping an eye out for the bullet, but it must’ve gone with the head. I added salt and pepper, then seared the meat in olive oil in a heavy Dutch oven in several batches, setting the pieces aside until they were all nicely browned.

A little more olive oil went into the pan, then I added two smashed garlic cloves, four branches of rosemary, and one whole lemon’s worth of zest, cut in wide strips with a vegetable peeler. When the garlic began to turn golden, I added a cup of white wine (Domaine des Cassagnoles, as that was what we had handy), and scraped up the fond from the bottom of the pan.

The browned rabbit pieces went into the liquid, largest pieces first, and I added a bit of water to just barely cover the meat. When the liquid came back to a simmer, I put the lid on and stuck the whole thing in a 350° oven for an hour and twenty minutes, which gave me plenty of time to have a drink and chop some kale.

When the braise was done, I lifted the rabbit pieces out onto a platter, then boiled down the liquid on the stovetop until it was down to a cup or less (I pulled the rosemary stems out first). I also mashed the garlic a bit so it was more integrated into the sauce. I scraped the reduced liquid out onto the rabbit, and we were ready to eat.

We had the rabbit with some simple soft polenta and a pile of Tuscan kale sauteed in olive oil, with plenty of juices and lemon zest pieces on top. The lemon was fantastic, sweet and almost candied and dissolving in the mouth. We had two wines that we were trying, the Cassagnoles I had used for the braise and a lovely, funky French Cinsault that was recommended to us. The white went gorgeously with the lemon sauce, but not as much with the rabbit, which was dark and very much like turkey leg meat (except for the belly flap, which tasted exactly like duck – hey, it’s Turducken!). The Cinsault went perfectly with the rabbit but drowned the lemon sauce. So we alternated. It worked fine.

This is a great recipe for rabbit, but I think it would also be fabulous as a shorter braise with chicken, or a longer one for pork. Any excuse to eat all that lemon zest. So what should we do with our next bunny?

I’m not feeling very verbose today, but I want to get this post up while I’m thinking about it. What am I thinking about? Pot beans with chimichurri. I’m not sure why I stumbled across this combination, but it was wonderful and we’ve eaten all the leftovers and now I’m going to have to make it again very soon.

I used speckled Vaquero beans from Rancho Gordo, soaked in salt water, then rinsed and cooked with onions and garlic fried in bacon fat. The beans had a soft texture and nice flavor, and kept their pretty spots much better than I expected. They were good by themselves, but with a drizzle of chimichurri on top – woof! It was incredible. I ate a whole bowl of just beans and sauce for lunch yesterday, with a piece of good sourdough bread.

The chimichurri I made this time was a bit different than the one I described back in February. I used a recipe from Francis Mallmann’s amazing book Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, which goes like this:

Chimichurri Sauce

• 1 cup water
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 cup fresh oregano
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 head garlic, broken apart and peeled
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Bring the water to a boil, stir in the salt, then set aside to cool.

Mince the garlic and chop the parsley and oregano. Combine them all in a bowl with the red pepper, then stir in the vinegar, oil and salt water. Refrigerate until ready to use, up to 2-3 weeks.

This makes a sauce which is more like a very pungent vinaigrette, rather than a pesto-like puree. Since I made this batch, we’ve ladled it over the previously mentioned soupy cooked beans, as well as grilled steaks, grilled bread, scallions, and fried eggs, and I could certainly support using it as a salad dressing or to dip steamed vegetables in. I cut my oregano plant down to the base to make this, and now I can’t wait until it grows back in.

I will always make room in my garden for herbs.

Also garlic, and spring bulbs, and maple trees, and iris (my garden is pretty full of stuff)…but if I could only grow a few plants, they would almost certainly be herbs. Pretty, hardy, easy to grow, and edible – what more could you ask from a plant? Not to mention how much a pack of fresh herbs costs at the grocery store. It’s cheaper to grow them yourself, and you know they’re fresh when you picked out of the back garden just a few minutes before dinner.

Here’s what’s currently growing in my garden:

I’ve always grown sage. My main sage bush came from a clump in my mother’s garden in Eastern Washington, unceremoniously dug out with a shovel and plopped into my first real garden over ten years ago. It gets straggly, but I simply cut it back hard and back it comes. I have several more sage plants, including a culinary sage in a pot on the deck, a large leaf sage mostly for ornament in the front yard, and a few purple sages for color. I hardly ever have dried sage on hand in the kitchen, because I can always go outside and pick some fresh, even in the snow.

I was so thrilled when I realized the Western Washington climate allowed me to grow bay laurel. I’m not sure I’d ever had sweet bay before, just the slightly toxic and harsh California bay sold in grocery stores. I adore fresh bay leaves, and use them in soups, braises, curries and roasts. A leaf in a simmering bechamel sauce gives it a great earthy scent. Going out to the patio in my bathrobe to pick a few leaves is a wonderful thing. My tree was enormous a few years ago, pushing up through the decking, but then a hard winter took it down and it’s currently reinventing itself with a forest of suckers. Sometimes when it needs pruning I’ll take a branch inside, so I’ll have dry leaves for blending into curry powders and sausage.

Rosemary is an absolute must. It grows like a weed in this climate, apart from the occasional hard frost, and I wouldn’t want to do without it. Our house came with an enormous Tuscan Blue plant established in the backyard, and I have to dissuade it from taking over the garden by whacking off several feet of new growth every spring. I also have an “Arp” in the front, in a difficult dry sunny spot. It’s blooming its little head off this year.

Fresh thyme is a wonderful thing. I have different varieties of thyme all over my garden, especially out in that difficult area by the sidewalk- lemon, lime, and Doone Valley – but I always make sure to have a pot or clump of regular culinary thyme. It’s not as tidy a grower as some, but a branch or two in a pot of beans provides a flavor nothing else can match. And when it blooms it’s always covered in bees.

I love chives. I currently have two clumps, but I hope to work up to several more. The season for snipping fresh chives is fairly short, so I tend to look for excuses to use it in the early spring before the tender sprigs toughen up. Scallion-chive breads are an absolute necessity, and anything involving cream cheese, goat cheese or eggs (not to mention crab risotto). When the flowers bloom, petals can be included in the snips. I have trouble keeping crabgrass from growing up into my chives, so whenever I bring some into the house I make sure to sort through it and pull out the flat blades. I really need to do a better job of weeding.

Parsley is a tender herb that I try not to be without. Every spring I buy a six-pack of starts and plant them out on the deck, which usually keeps me in tabouli all summer. It’s easy to grow and bug-free. I usually get Italian flat-leaf, but I have one plant of curly parsley that’s been hogging a container since last year.

Spearmint is very important! I don’t dare plant mint in the ground, as it would probably join forces with the buttercup and bindweed and take over the neighborhood, but I always keep a pot of it going, sometimes two or three. Fresh spearmint (not peppermint, mind you) is indispensible for mint juleps, mojitos, and our favorite lamb noodles with yogurt. We go through a lot of it.

Cilantro is an herb that I love, but seldom grow. This year I have a few starts tossed into pots alongside leafy greens and flowers – not enough for cooking, but it should provide the occasional garnish over the summer. Back when I had a full-sun garden I grew vast amounts of cilantro from seed, which was wonderful.

And then there’s fennel. When we lived near the sea bluffs in California, I would walk through the fields of wild fennel and inhale the fragrance of it. When I began gardening, I discovered the existence of bronze-leafed fennel, bought a plant, and now have an inexhaustible supply, as it’s an enthusiastic self-seeder. When the plants are allowed to establish, they get to be six feet tall and over a foot across at the base, and the only care they require is pruning out the old stalks in the early spring.

Note that this is a different variety than Florence, or bulb, fennel – there’s no bulbous root here to eat – but the leaves and seeds are edible. I sometimes harvest the seeds, but mostly I leave them for the adorable tiny birds that come through every winter and cling to the branches.

I may as well mention lemon balm, or melissa, as I will probably never be rid of it. This also came from my mother’s garden, planted by me with the thought of repelling mosquitoes and maybe flavoring iced tea. In truth, I’ve seen loads of mosquitoes around the plant, and rubbing it on skin has no effect at all except to make yourself smell like a citronella candle. The leaves are pretty enough and the scent is bright and lemony (although a bit reminiscent of furniture polish), but it spreads quickly, is hard to dig out and needs to be pruned to the ground twice a year to keep it tidy. I’ve found clumps of it coming up in remote parts of the garden, presumably transmitted through compost. Or magic. I may have put a leaf in a glass of tea once. Perhaps.

I’ve just added oregano and tarragon this year. I had an oregano plant for a while, but it got eaten by the sage bush. I recently planted a healthy start in a pot on the deck where it should get plenty of sun, and I just made a batch of chimichurri with it. The hailstorm we had last week knocked it pretty flat, but it looks vigorous enough to rebound. Tarragon is something I’ve never grown, and I hear it’s finicky and delicate. I love the occasional tarragon-scented sauce for fish, though, so I’m hopeful. It will probably go in a container as well – it’s currently in one of those plantable peat pots.

What herbs are you growing this season?

This stroganoff was one of those dinners that naturally arises by examining a number of random leftovers: in our case, a container of lebni, a bag of mushrooms, some partial leeks and a bunch of fresh dill left from our post-Easter brunch. Combine all that with some sliced seared steak and some egg noodles and you have a really good quick beef stroganoff.

I don’t think it would have occurred to me to use lebni in a stroganoff, but I liked the effect. It’s similar to sour cream but has a denser texture and is slightly less tart. It worked great with the mushrooms and dill. Come to think of it, that would be a really nice dip or spread right there – maybe I’ll try that next time I have these particular leftovers in the house.

We have rather a lot of beef in our downstairs freezer, thanks to the half a cow we buy every couple of years, so any time the urge for steak strikes we tend to go with it. It’s a wonderful excuse to make chimichurri sauce, a traditional Argentinian concoction of parsley, lemon, hot pepper and olive oil. And as it turns out, it’s even better on roasted mushrooms than it is on beef. A little bit spooned into an omelet was a good move as well. Actually, I’m not sure what it wouldn’t be good on.

We looked through quite a few books looking for different chimichurri recipes. Some use lemon juice, some use vinegar. Some are just parsley, but many add oregano as well. All versions are good – you could basically make up your own depending on the ingredients at hand. We just tried a version out of one of our street food cookbooks, and it turned out spectacular. It was very liquidy, though – not a problem as long as everything on your plate tastes good with chimichurri sauce, because it’s all going to get souped up together. You could probably thicken it up by adding a lot more chopped fresh herb and folding it in at the end.

We’re planning on making this quite a lot this summer, especially once we get the grill out. I’m keen to try chimichurri on grilled eggplant. And lamb. And fish. And, of course, more steak.

Chimichurri

Adapted from Street Food by Tom Kime

• 3 dried red chiles
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• juice of 2 lemons
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp or so dried oregano (or a small bunch of fresh, if you have it)

Stuff all the ingredients into a small food processor and zizz until it’s the texture you want. You could save out some of the parsley, chop it and stir it in at the end for a different effect.

Even after I had learned how to cook most things, I had no idea how to deal with a piece of salmon. It was embarrassing, but I was sufficiently terrified by the idea of cooking, not just salmon, but any fish, that I almost never tried. I was scared of it being raw, but I hated it overcooked. So I just skipped the whole thing, which is really a shame when you live in the  Pacific Northwest.

Enter that saviour of timid chefs everywhere, Mark Bittman! All of his recipes tend to have a comforting, you-can-do-this sort of tone, with simple techniques and ingredients. I discovered a stovetop-to-oven method of cooking salmon fillets in his book The Minimalist Cooks at Home, and it worked so well I wouldn’t cook salmon any other way for years. It repeatedly produced fish that was moist, tender and cooked all the way through. It’s simple: crust the fish with herbs and spices, melt butter in an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat, add the fish seasoning-side down and cook one minute. Flip and cook one more minute. Put the pan in the oven and cook about five minutes or until done how you like. Easy.

Over time I’ve mucked around with both the cooking method and the seasoning from the original recipe. I now usually just panfry my salmon in a nonstick skillet at medium heat, and flavor it with cumin and salt. Every once in a while, though, it’s fun to revisit Bittman’s original flavorings of rosemary, orange and fennel.

Rosemary is one of the herbs I’m never likely to run out of – the bush under our deck is over three feet high and four feet wide. I always pick more than I need just to keep the shrub in check a bit. For this recipe I probably used the leaves from two six-inch twigs.

The rosemary gets chopped and mixed with the zest of one orange…

…and about a teaspoon of fennel seed, crushed in a mortar (or spice grinder if that’s easier).

Mix in some coarse salt and pepper, and spread the spices over the salmon fillets. Heat butter or oil in a skillet and carefully lay the pieces spice-side down, hopefully not spilling the topping all over the pan. You want the seasonings to form a nice crust over the fish.

Cooking just on the stovetop, I probably keep the fillets in the pan about six minutes, flipping occasionally. I like my salmon a bit rare inside – if you like yours more done I’d use the oven method, or turn down the heat so the fish doesn’t overcook on the outside.

We ate this with roasted beets and parsnips, and a salad with a strong mustard dressing. The flavors are bold and a bit sweet, and I loved how the orange in the fish went with the beets.

For the last two weeks I’ve had the latest issue of Food & Wine sitting on my kitchen table. It’s not that I haven’t read it - I have – but I don’t allow myself to keep the back issues and so I hate to recycle it until I’m absolutely done with it. I keep going back through it to make sure there isn’t one more recipe to cut out or one more restaurant review to make a note of. As a result, I’ve been staring constantly at a large front-cover photo of chicken salad with Green Goddess dressing. With predictable results.

I have actually never made Green Goddess dressing. I mean, ever. So this was sort of a duh moment for me, as I realized that I had fresh herbs all over the place, garlic and anchovies ready to hand, and a tub of sour cream in the fridge left over from our Monday night enchiladas. There was no reason at all not to make this. And I had the perfect vehicle for the dressing: a large bag of perfect, slender green beans from Blue Heron Farm. I cut the beans in half, blanched them in boiling salted water and drained them, then got to work on my dressing.

Being incapable of following a recipe for salad dressing, I made this up as I went along. I pulled some parsley and basil from the garden and chopped them roughly, tossing them into a small food processor with two anchovies, a clove of garlic, two large spoonfuls of mayonnaise and one of sour cream. I thought about cutting open a fresh lemon but decided on champagne vinegar instead, adding just a small dash. Once all was blended, I stirred in a good handful of finely chopped fresh chives, then scraped it all over the blanched and cooled green beans. Once it was all mixed up, I decided it needed a little color and added one fresh tomato, cut into thin wedges. Perfect.

In a word? Yum. We ate our green bean salad alongside a truly spectacular rack of pork baby back ribs, which Jon had barbecued and glazed with reduced apple cider. A bottle of Pinot Noir rosé was a textbook-perfect accompaniment to the beans, complementing the sharp herbs while cutting through the creaminess. I suspect this will not be my last batch of Green Goddess.

In defiance of all the traditional wisdom of what a Skagit County spring should be like, the last few weeks have ranged from pleasant to actively hot, with practically no rain. Normally we’re lucky if we even see the sun before the Fourth of July! Instead we’ve been able to turn off the house heat, the garden has needed to be watered several times a week, and the summer cocktail recipes are beginning to emerge. When I saw that this month’s Mixology Monday theme was ginger, I knew just what drink I was going to post about.

Two of my favorite summer drinks are the mint julep and Lillet Blanc on the rocks, but Jon recently discovered a drink on the Lillet website that combines fresh mint and Lillet, then punches it up with fresh ginger and lime. They call it a Lillet Sin, for some odd reason – it’s one of the least sinful cocktails I can think of. It’s extremely light and refreshing, and the ginger gives it a nice heat that complements the bright mint and lime flavors. It tastes slightly exotic, while retaining a certain cold-lemonade quality, very welcome on a hot afternoon. You could certainly soup it up with gin or vodka, but then you might not be able to drink as many.

The original recipe’s a bit vague, so each time we’ve made it it’s come out a little different. You could muddle the mint or just add a sprig to the glass, you could shake it or stir it. We’ve found that we like it with quite a lot of ginger, and not too much Perrier. Adjust to your own taste.

Lillet Sin

adapted from the Lillet website

• 2 oz Lillet Blanc
• ice
• 4 mint leaves
• 1 wedge lime
• 1 slice ginger
• 1 tsp simple syrup or fine sugar
• tonic water or Perrier
• another lime wedge, for garnish

Muddle the mint, ginger and lime in a shaker or glass. Add the Lillet, ice and simple syrup and stir well, strain into a wineglass filled with ice, top up with tonic water and garnish with a lime wedge. Sip while reclining comfortably in the shade on a warm day.

Mixology Monday this month is being hosted by Rumdood. Final roundup is here - check out all the great ginger drinks!

At this point in the season, the rhubarb plants have peaked, attempted to bloom their heads off (and been thwarted by my Felcos), and are beginning to settle back into merely being a large green presence in the yard without actually attempting to overrun or squash anything. We’ve had rhubarb crisp, clafoutis, pie, compote, and muffins, and stowed away a large freezer bag of chopped stalks for later.

Despite all that, I’m nowhere near rhubarb burnout, and there are several recipes left that I want to try – for instance, I’ve still never roasted rhubarb. Or poached it in red wine. I have, however, braised it with green herbs, onion, tomato and saffron. Sound weird? It’s actually really, really good.

I found this recipe quite by accident, several years ago, in a library book called Silk Road Cooking (come to think of it, I should check it out again). Out of curiosity I tried it out, and liked it so much I immediately wrote it into my personal recipe notebook. My parents have made it several times, too. It’s piquant and savory and a great way to use up rhubarb. This is a perfect time of year to make it, too, when all the green herbs are hitting their stride.

The book attributes this dish to Kurdish nomads, living in the mountains where rhubarb grows wild. The smell as it cooks is very much like the Afghan soup called ash, redolent with dill and turmeric. There’s just a hint of heat, depending on what kind of chile you add.

The recipe is very specific about what herbs to use, but I would feel free to make substitutions or change quantities (make sure you use at least some dill, though, if possible). For this last batch, I happened to have tons of fresh mint, dill, parsley and cilantro, but I didn’t want to use up all my chives so I left them out. Dried herbs could work fine as well, since they are incorporated early and have plenty of time to stew.

The other ingredient that I’ve considered changing is the split peas. They give the braise a more colorful appearance – rather like corn - and a subtle nutty flavor, but I have trouble getting them to cook soft enough in the given cooking time, and find them a little distracting in texture. Next time I might substitute chickpeas, or leave them out altogether, depending on how I’m serving the braise.

Despite having both rhubarb and lime juice, this really isn’t too tart – the sweet onion and the herbs really cut the sour. But feel free to add extra sugar at the end if you think it needs it. Personally I like the tartness.

Kurdish Braised Rhubarb

adapted from Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey
by Najmieh Batmanglij

• 4 Tbsp oil
• 1 sweet onion, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 hot chile or 1/2 tsp chile paste (she specifies a red chile, but I sliced up a green serrano)
• 3 cups chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped mint
• 1/2 cup chopped chives
• 1/2 cup choppped dill
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 2/3 cup yellow split peas (or canned chickpeas)
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 3 1/2 cups stock or water
• 1 fresh tomato, sliced
• pinch of saffron soaked in 2 Tbsp hot water
• juice of half a lime
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 lb rhubarb, cut into 1 inch chunks

Saute the onion in the oil until soft, then add the garlic, chile and herbs. Add the split peas, salt, pepper and turmeric, saute for a few minutes. Add stock or water, bring to a boil, cover and simmer 20 min or until the split peas have softened. Check to make sure it’s not boiling dry; if so, add a little more water.

Add the tomato, the saffron and its soaking liquid, the lime juice and sugar. Bring back to a boil, then arrange the rhubarb on top, cover and simmer another 10-15 minutes, until the rhubarb is soft. Taste and adjust salt or sugar as necessary.

Serve over couscous or rice, or with plenty of bread – something to soak up all the tart herby sauce. Excellent with lamb or chicken. Leftovers could easily be turned into a soup.

This post is part of the Grow Your Own blog event – check out the roundup at Gardenopolis!