 The French call basil "l'herbe royale." The Italians use this herb so copiously you'd think it was a vegetable. Basil's taste is reminiscent of its cousin, mint - but with licorice, cinnamon, clove, lemon, and thyme tones. Apparently mosquitoes don't like all these flavors, and organic basil is an effective mosquito repellant: try planting it around windows and doors. A native of India, basil comes in more than 50 varieties, which are usually green but may be purple.
Health Benefits: A pungent, warming herb, organic basil is restorative. It helps restore your balance, especially of lung - or stomach-related complaints. It calms the nerves, aids digestion, and treats fevers, whooping cough, constipation, nausea, insomnia, fatigue, colds, and the flu. It is effective against bacterial infections and intestinal parasites.
Use: A favorite in ethnic dishes from Indonesia to Italy, basil is especially savored as a pesto ingredient and has a great affinity for tomato, fish, bean, and egg dishes.
An ancient and popular herb since Egyptian times, cilantro is in the carrot family. The leaves have an anise like taste (soapy when used in excess) and an earthy, fetid aroma. Because of this distinctive aroma, the Greeks named it koris, or bedbug. Cilantro is similar in appearance to parsley but lighter colored, with larger and less curled leaves. Once dried, cilantro loses its overpowering aroma. The seed, known as coriander, is tan and the size of a peppercorn. It is sweet and strongly aromatic, with a slight taste of orange peel.
Health Benefits: Pungent and sweet in flavor, astringent and cooling (leaves), and neutral (seeds), organic cilantro supports the spleen-pancreas, stomach, bladder, and lung meridians. Organic cilantro and coriander help regulate energy, are diuretic, and specifically treat urinary tract infections. Both leaves and seeds are diaphoretic (support perspiration) and therefore treat a fever. They aid digestion, relieve intestinal gas, pain, and distention, and support peristalsis. They treat nausea, soothe inflammation, rheumatic pain, headaches, coughs, and mental stress, and they quench thirst.
Use: Cilantro is basic in cuisine the world over; some say it is the most used herb, especially in warm regions, such as Mexico, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India. The leaves should not be overcooked. Cilantro may be used like parsley, as a garnish and a flavoring herb. Use it sparingly with delicate ingredients, or its flavor overpowers. Or use it in large quantities in strongly flavored sauces and salsas. In Southeast Asian dishes, cilantro root is also used. The slightly sweet, almost caramel tasting seed acts as a catalyst to bring out the flavors of other ingredients, yet never masks or overpowers them.
Storing: Cilantro is highly perishable and stores best when attached to its roots. Place the roots in a container of water, cover the greens with plastic, and refrigerate for up to a week. If purchased without roots, cover cilantro with a damp cloth, refrigerate in a perforated plastic bag, and use within four or five days.
 The German word for chive is schnittlauch, or cuttable leek, an apt name for the chive, which like your front lawn, will thrive when the top half clipped back. This feature is one reason why the chive is such a common and rewarding kitchen window box herb. The chive grows wild from the artic Russia to the Mediterranean. A chive looks like a slender scallion without the swollen bulk. Its soft springtime flavor is more delicate than a scallion and also more arresting.
Health Benefits: Chives, the least potent of the onion family, have lesser medicinal properties; furthermore, they are used in such small quantities that their energetic properties are negligible. Garlic chives have potent medicinal properties.
Use: The delicate chive flavor is lost when chives are dried at home; when industrially dried, more of the flavor is retained. Still, they're best fresh. Long cooking compromises most of their flavor. Chives are used most often as a garnish or in subtly flavored dishes. Feature their purple pompom blossoms in flower arrangements, or as a salad ingredient. Mostly available year-round.
 The most popular American pickle takes its name not from what's pickled--the cucumber--but from the herb that punches up the flavor of this otherwise bland vegetable, dill. Dill is an aromatic herb with delicate lacy leaves similar in appearance to its relative fennel. As with another of its relatives, cilantro, both the leaf and seed of dill are used.
Health Benefits: Dill is a pungent, warming herb that tonifies the stomach, spleen-pancreas, and liver. Its seeds are more tonic than its leaves. Dill calms the spirit, aids digestion and insomnia due to indigestion, and relieves hiccups and intestinal gas. It controls infection, is a diuretic, promotes lactation, and alleviates menstrual difficulty. Dill's warming properties help it dry overly moist conditions and therefore helps treat viral conditions.
Use: Dill is milder than caraway but sweeter and more aromatic than anise. It is popular throughout Europe and much of Asia, but it is most prized in Scandinavian, Russian, and Polish cooking, where it appears in breads, sauces, salads, and with fish. In the United States, dill is most often used in pickles. The featherlike greens are added toward the end of cooking because heat diminishes their flavor. Ideally, use fresh dill; using dry, add generously since drying diminishes flavor. Dill seeds are flat and oval and more intensely flavored than the leaf.
Even if you were blindfolded in a garden, your nose would draw you right to mint. Mint is a fragrant presence not only in the garden but in the kitchen and medicine cabinet as well. There are more than five hundred known mint varieties, the two most common culinary mints being peppermint and spearmint. Although used interchangeably, peppermint is the more cooling and stimulating of the two. Spearmint is slightly warming.
Health Benefits: The pungent menthol flavor of the mint helps disperse pathogens such as viruses or bacteria, invigorates by promoting circulation of energy, blood, and lymph. These properties make mint a useful ingredient in many herbal remedies, especially when there is excessive heat, such as in mastitis, painful menstruation, and hives. Peppermint relieves spasms, increases perspiration, and tones the digestive system, especially the colon.
Use: Mint’s menthol is too intense an aroma and taste to go with subtly flavored savory dishes. But it’s a great addition to tea, sugary foods, chocolate, and candy. Mint jelly or sauce is a traditional accompaniment to lamb. Because of its cooling properties, in hot weather I strew it in teas, boldly flavored chilled soups, and in rice, tabbouleh, and couscous salad.
 A hardy perennial herb, oregano, whose name derives from the Greek "joy of the mountains," gives a punchy, almost peppery uplifting flavor to countless Greek and Italian dishes, especially tomato-based ones. Unlike more delicately flavored herbs, which lose much of their flavor when dried, oregano holds its flavor well.
 The world’s most popular herb, parsley, originated in Sardinia, and Sardinian coins, until recent time, were minted with a parsley imprint. The name parsley comes from the Greek, meaning "rock celery" (parsley is a celery relative); banqueting Greeks wore parsley crowns to stimulate the appetite and promote good humor. A biennial plant, once established in your garden, parsley will come back year after year.
Health Benefits: A sprig of it can freshen the breath. Two sprigs of parsley contain 10 IUs of vitamin A. Parsley has three times as much vitamin C as oranges, and twice as much iron as spinach; it is also a good source of copper and manganese.
Use: Do more with parsley than garnish. You can serve it as a vibrant ingredient in steamed and blanched vegetable dishes, as a base for salad dressings, as a sauce ingredient, or generously strewn in soups and casseroles. Unlike the tops, cooked parsley stems do not color a dish, so chopped fine they are good for a white sauce.
Buying: There are two main types of parsley; the strongly flavored flat leaf parsley (also known as Italian parsley), which stands up well to heat; and the mildly flavored curly parsley, which is a better keeper. Flat leaf parsley is a deep blue-green; curly, a lighter green. Select parsley with no sign of wilting. Dried parsley offers little flavor and less color.
This Italian flat-leafed parsley has, of course, flat leaves, which distinguishes it from the better-known curly leafed parsley. At first the foliage might be easily confused with cilantro. However, its flavor is distinctly parsley, and it is favored for its deep flavor which some say holds up better in cooking than curly parsley. It is popular in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine. Easy to chop, the nutritious flat leaves are high in iron and in vitamins A, C, and E. High chlorophyll content makes it a natural breath sweetener, too.
 Rosemary is native to the Mediterranean region. In ancient times, it symbolized both love and death and was frankincense substitute for the poor. A perennial in mild climates, rosemary is often used as a landscape plant as well as a culinary herb.
Health Benefits: An excellent stimulant, rosemary is a warming herb that improves poor circulation; lowers cholesterol; eases muscle and rheumatism pains; and treats lung congestion, sore throat, and canker sores. Rosemary stimulates the nervous system, supports mental functions and memory, helps relieve a sluggish gallbladder, and is often used in penetrating liniments.
Use: With its pine-like, camphor flavor, rosemary is more potent than most herbs and a little rosemary seasons chicken, lamb, and pork, and it often is added to breads, black olives, and biscuits. Its flavor is not reduced with cooking. It is available fresh and dried.
Arrugula (arugula) is also known as roquette, true rocket, rocket salad, tira, and in England as white pepper. The name "rocket" derives from the French roquette, a diminutive form of the Latin eruca, the Italian ruccetta, and medieval French Provencal roqueto. Its zesty leaves are used in a young tender stage in salads and sometimes cooked as a potherb.
The plant was spoken of by early writers as a good salad herb, but which should not be eaten alone. Ancient Egyptians and Romans both have considered the leaves in salads to be an aphrodisiac.
A member of the mint family, culinary sage is highly aromatic and is best used fresh, when its flavor has been described as a mix of rosemary, pine and mint, or citrusy; when dried, it has a more camphorous flavor.
The best way to crush sage leaves is to rub them between your hands-hence, the "rubbed sage" one finds on supermarket shelves. The flowers of any culinary sage are edible, as well as beautiful, and have a more delicate flavor than the leaves. Stems or leaves can also be tossed on hot charcoal where they will add a wonderful aroma to grilled dishes.
Thyme has a strong piquant or lemony flavor. Thyme is one of the most popular herbs for flavoring soups, stews, stuffing, and sauces. It performs especially well in slowly cooked dishes, and it doesn’t overpower other flavors.
Among the many different varities of thyme are lemon thyme and caraway-scented thyme. Thyme leaves are tiny and their stems are woody – so instructions for using the fresh herb range from tying thyme up in cheesecloth to stripping the leaves through the tines of a fork.
The flavor of this variety is a bit spicier than that of French tarragon, having an accent of cinnamon in addition to the sweet licorice taste normally associated with tarragon. It can be used in the same manner as French tarragon, and gives whatever dish it is in an extra dimension of zest.
A classic ingredient in tarter and béarnaise sauces, fresh tarragon enhances salads and dressings and vegetable, poultry, and fish dishes. It is especially compatible with beans, mushrooms, squash, and eggs and is a favorite herb for flavoring vinegar. Use, sparingly, as its flavor easily overpowers other ingredients.
from Rebecca Wood's The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia |
