Erica De Mane

Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener, painted by Agnolo Bronzino in 1561.

Recipes below: String Beans and Potatoes with Wild Arugula and Almond Pesto; Cucumber Salad with Burnet and Breakfast Radishes

I plant my herb garden in stages, to avoid gardening burnout. I used to love gardening burnout. I’d get so elatedly wasted. But as I’ve gotten older, I find it a little scary. Ticks, knee pain, sunstroke. I’ve had Lyme twice. But still I need my herbs, so I press on.

I do pot gardening, so, every spring it all starts from scratch. The reason for this is that the soil in upstate New York is about 95 percent rock. Backbreaking work even just dropping in seeds. One of these days I’ll construct a big raised bed, I guess. But for now I’ve got a good collection of big terra cotta pots. They smell wonderful when wet, and I think they’re beautiful.

My first plantings this year were from the greatest hits parade—thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage. It felt good to get those in, giving them time to grow large (I put in a lot of thyme, especially). Then I went ahead and planted a huge pot of wild arugula seeds. With luck they’ll sprout in a few weeks. I got the seeds from Seeds from Italy, an excellent source for Sicilian eggplant, cicoria rosa, Calabrian chilies, mentuccia, and more. Their arugula is the real deal, cultivated from wild and not like the big blousy bunches you find in the supermarkets or the prepackaged baby stuff. If it ever comes up it’ll be forte. My father grew a similar spiky, super bitter arugula in our backyard for 30 years. It was a gift from our neighbor who smuggled it back from Sorrento in the early sixties, and it was so intense that most of my friends wouldn’t touch my mother’s salads. Poison in a bowl, but, in my opinion, wonderful poison. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck growing my own. Maybe Long Island, where I grew up, is closer to Mediterranean than the Hudson Valley. I’m trying again. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve also planted salad burnet, which I’ve been curious about for some time but hadn’t previously seen at any of my usual herb buying haunts. It’s originally a Mediterranean plant, a member of the rose family. Evidently it grows wild in upstate New York, but I haven’t found any (and I’ve been looking). Luckily this year I spotted small pots of it at Northern Dutchess Botanical Gardens, a big place in Milan (pronounced MY-lan), New York, with an extensive selection including some oddball stuff. If you’re ever up near Rhinebeck, check them out. My burnet seems to be taking well to its big pot. At the moment, it tastes faintly of sweet cucumber, but I’ve read that in really hot weather it will take on a watermelon taste. Can’t wait for that, if actually true.

This week I’ll move on to the leafier herbs.

Salad burnet.

String Beans and Potatoes with Wild Arugula and Almond Pesto

I got the idea for this from the traditional Genoese pasta with pesto, which also often contains little diced potatoes and string beans. I just left out the pasta and changed up the pesto.

(Serves 4)

About a cup of small, spikey arugula
1 small clove of spring garlic, smashed
⅓ cup very fresh blanched almonds
Extra-virgin olive oil (about ¼ cup)
¼ cup grated grana Padano cheese
Sea salt
½ pound string beans, trimmed and cut in half if really long
1 pound of really tiny Yukon Gold potatoes, left whole (if you can only find bigger ones, cut them in half)

Put up a small pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Add the arugula, and blanch it for about 30 seconds. Drain it, and then plunge it into a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking. This will set its deep green color. Now drain it well, and squeeze it out.

Put the garlic and the almonds in a food processor, and pulse them until well ground. Add the arugula and about ¼ cup of good olive oil. Pulse until blended. Add the grana Padano and a little salt, and pulse again, until the mix is quite smooth. Add a little more olive oil if it seems dry. The pesto is best made shortly before you want to serve it.

Put up a medium-size pot of water, add a little salt, and bring it to a boil. Drop in the string beans, and blanch until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Scoop them from the water with a big strainer spoon, and run them under cold water to bring up their green color.

Add the potatoes to the string bean cooking water, and boil until just tender.  Drain them, saving about ½ cup of the cooking water.

Put the string beans and the warm potatoes into a nice looking serving bowl. Add the pesto, and toss, adding enough cooking water to make a creamy coating (probably only a tablespoon or so). Serve right away.

Cucumber Salad with Burnet and Breakfast Radishes

(Serves 4)

1½ English cucumbers (the Persian variety is also good for this, if you can find it), stripe-peeled and cut into thin rounds
3 French breakfast radishes, sliced on an angle
1 red scallion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
A pinch of sugar
A pinch of piment d’espelette
A handful of salad burnet leaves, stemmed (A few big sprigs of tarragon are also nice here instead, even though their flavor is completely different, or you can use both, a good mix)

Combine the cucumber, radishes, and scallions in a wide serving bowl. Mix the rice wine vinegar, soy, and olive oil together, seasoning with salt, black pepper, a pinch of sugar, and a little espelette. Pour the mixture over the salad, and toss. Scatter on the burnet leaves, and toss gently. Serve now or a little later.