Erica De Mane

Recipe for a soft herb salad in the next-to-last paragraph below.

So far all my herbs look good. I knew they were starting out in that direction when in early spring my lovage came bursting out of the ground and grew huge in only three weeks. Lovage is a powerhouse herb, in growth but also in taste, like celery condensed into a speeding bullet. I use only a leaf or two when I cook a pot of beans or make a potato salad. I find it interesting that the herb I use the least of is the biggest thing in my garden. Although my fennel is also already gigantic. 

I planted a lot of other herbs this year too, some, like hyssop and za’atar, for this first time. They all look promising. I always lighten up when I see that my plants are starting to take. My father had the same early season gardening anxiety when he planted and tended his tomatoes. He’d be out in his garden at weird hours, chain-smoking and staring hard at the little seedlings, maybe trying to instill some fear in them. I’m not sure what his method was, but we always had good tomatoes. I go out to my herb garden and stare and worry and sometimes plead with them. It’s part of the process.

Up here in Dutchess County, New York, only a handful of herbs are perennial, and sometimes even the perennials get defeated by our miserable winters. But this year everything I hoped would come back did. In addition to my out-of-control lovage and fennel, all my various thymes and oreganos returned, as did my nepitella, winter savory, tarragon, sage, and borage, which is popping up all over the place. The lavender didn’t make it this year, and rosemary always gets freezer burn and needs a fresh start. That makes me sad, especially knowing how big and gorgeous those things can get in the right climate. This slate-riddled upstate soil, frozen for months each year, is obviously nothing like the Southern Mediterranean, but my Southern Italian blood pushes me to pretend it is. I just have to keep on top of things.

In the meantime, here’s something nice you can make with fresh herbs, whether you have five or six types or only a couple. It isn’t so much a recipe as a reminder that you can make a salad out of nothing but herbs. 

When I compose an herb salad I concentrate on leafy, soft, gentle herbs, avoiding piney, musty, and tough-stalked ones like rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage. For this version I clipped Italian parsley, burnet, chervil, fennel fronds, a few sprigs of tarragon, and a handful of watercress, which I consider an herb. You can add arugula or sorrel, or lots of basil (my basil isn’t yet big enough to pick from). I prefer to dress an herb salad with my best olive oil, a tiny splash of rice wine vinegar, and a sprinkling of salt. I find a gentle vinegar best here, even better than lemon, which to my taste, can be too direct.

This salad is good to eat neat, but it also makes a nice, perfumed bed for something grilled, like shrimp, lamb kebab, or eggplant.