Rosemary is an herb with particularly woody stalks.  While you wouldn’t want to garnish a plate with them, they make excellent natural skewers for food. When roasting rosemary skewered potatoes in the oven, the rosemary sprigs burn up, very lightly smoking the potatoes and imparting a gentle hint of rosemary flavor.  When the potatoes are …

This easy, beautiful and flavorful herb oil brings as much color to dishes as it does flavor.  Use it to brighten the appearance and flavor profile of any chive-friendly dish (especially seafood). Ingredients: 1/2 bunch Fresh Chives 1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil Salt to taste Directions: 1. Rinse the chives briefly under very hot …

A bouquet garni is basically an aromatizing agent that is used to add flavor and aroma to dishes. Bouquet garnis are removed from the dish after they have flavored and aromatized it.That’s why you want to tie it up…it would be quite a challenge to fish peppercorns out of a boiling pot! The classic bouquet …

Herb oils are a beautiful, tasty, and incredibly easy condiment or garnish.  Here’s an explanation of the basic technique. How to Make Herb Oils: Ingredients: 1 cup olive oil Fresh herbs (for example, a ½ bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley) 1 tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice Portuguese Sea Salt to taste Directions: 1.  Thoroughly wash the herbs.  …

Fresh herbs offer a tremendous amount of flavor, allowing you to enjoy an entire salad’s worth of flavor in a tiny, brightly colored pile of herbs on your plate.  The below recipe is simply a (very good) example.  Try blending your own combinations of herbs or making fresh herb salads using micro herbs to bring …

A mignonette is a vinegar & shallot based sauce commonly used to add complexity & bite to raw oysters.  Because we love raw oysters, we also love mignonettes (see also our classic mignonette recipe & wasabi mignonette recipe).  This one’s a little different, but incredibly delicious and worth tracking down lovage for. Raw oysters dressed …

This fresh tasting, herby & slightly hot sauce is delicious on steaks, many other cuts of meat, and seafood.  If you want, you can supplement or replace the lime juice with white wine vinegar for a different flavor.  The jalepenos can also be replaced with dried chilies that have been reconstituted. Ingredients: 2 cloves of garlic ½ bunch of fresh …

This recipe can be used with almost any fresh herbs to make a tasty and colorful dessert sauce or cocktail mixer.  Here we’ve used the most popular dessert herb, mint, but you could substitute any variety (completely trimming the stems if they’re woody) that works with the other flavors in your dish. Ingredients:                Makes approx. 20 …

Salsa verde is a dark green herb sauce, often made with boquerones, which add a fishy tang. In this recipe we’ve left the boquerones out to create a vegetarian salsa verde (check out our Japan-inspired tacos recipe for a version with the fish). You can use a variety of different herbs to make salsa verde, …

Whether you spell it tzatziki, tsatsiki, tzadziki or tatziki, there’s no denying this sauce is delicious.  Crisp, refreshing, creamy, herby and slightly sour, it’s great on salads, sandwiches, as a dipping sauce or used to balance rich meats. Ingredients: 3 cups of Napa Cabbage, shredded 2 tbsp Fresh Dill, rough chopped 2 tbsp Fresh Parsley, …