Erica De Mane

I’ve never done this in any organized way before, but I just now decided it would be a nice thing to rank my favorite herbs by how much I love them. I wanted to write it out for myself, and then I thought possibly you’d be interested in it, too.

I find good uses for every herb except cilantro, which makes me gag. I love summer savory with beans and braised beef and pork dishes, and in minestrone, but it’s not my favorite smell straight on. Thyme is an herb I use in many dishes, often as an anchoring flavor in the early stages of cooking. It’s amazing in a compound butter to melt over a thick pork chop, or as a starting point for chicken alla cacciatore, but cutting a few sprigs and bringing them up to my nose, why do I sometimes smell toothpaste? Strange.  Oregano has a bite I expect to accompany certain grilled vegetables, eggplant and sweet peppers, for instance, and meats, sausages especially. It takes me back to my Italian American childhood. Yet a clean chomp on an oregano sprig doesn’t make me so happy. I love these herbs as tools for cooking, but for all-out beauty of aroma and taste, there are herbs that fall into a different category, ones of pure intoxication. Here are the herbs that are knocking me out right now, in early summer, best, then next best, then down to almost best.

This ranking will likely change as the season progressives. But this is my up-to-the-minute report.

Thai basil

Thai basil’s deep anise aroma is for me an exotic joy, but the herb’s taste is different from its smell, more like licorice. It’s really bold, but somehow I never tire of it. The herb still surprises me, even after years of cooking with it. And its strength doesn’t fade out with heat, unlike other basils. That’s a bonus. Siam Queen is the type I plant. It’s the standard Thai variety that’s easiest to find and grow in the Northeast.  So different from Italian basil varieties. (Actually no basil is originally Italian. Their origins lie in India, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa, but Liguria and all of Southern Italy have made basil their own.) Every spring when I plant my Siam Queen (it’s an annual), I feel like I’m giving myself a huge gift. Braised calamari with cannellini beans and Thai basil is an exception thing.

Marjoram

If it weren’t for my current love affair with Thai basil, marjoram would be number one. I consider it a perfume, meaning something I’d personally love to smell like. I use it so much in my cooking, I guess I do often smell like it. Even though it’s closely related to oregano, to me they are so different. Marjoram is sweet and floral, with none of the camphor tones of oregano. I do pick up a gentle pine taste, but there’s so much sweetness, too, that nothing registers as sharp. I even made a sweet marjoram sorbetto last summer, and you wouldn’t believe how desserty it was. (I tend to like desserts than could pass as appetizers.) Marjoram is my current favorite flavoring for shellfish. I recently used it in place of Italian parsley in a linguine with clam sauce, I thought with good results.

Genoa basil

Genoese basil is what Genoese pesto is all about. It’s a beautiful clean basil, without a profound hit of anise. For me, it’s a perfect blend of sweet and savory. My father always grew it in his backyard garden. Each leaf was precious. At the end of the season he’d salt what was left, wrap it in plastic and then in aluminum foil, and stick his little packages in the freezer, only to pull them out in December, the leaves now black as could be, to add to our Christmas Eve zuppa di pesce. Floating black strips in a sea of  mussels and shrimp. That memory now makes me sad, I guess because we can now buy fresh basil at the supermarket year-round. He worked so hard on his basil. But there’s nothing like summer basil, picked from the garden and immediately ground down into a pesto.  That ritual is reserved for high summer.

Rosemary

I’m crazy about rosemary, but I think I overdid it with it last year. I used it in places where I should have chosen something less obvious. I also added it many sweet things, like sugar cookies and polenta cake.  It started to wear on me. But its pure pine aroma is such a draw, I reach for it sometimes when I’m feeling disgusted or agitated, knowing it will likely lift me up. However, it offers no sweetness. When I crush a needle in my fingers I capture fresh eucalyptus. I think the beauty of rosemary comes through best when you let heat open it up and diffuse its oils. Rosemary-and-garlic lamb spiedini, and rosemary-and-lemon roast chicken come to mind. Classics.

Fennel

Fennel is a natural flavor for me, maybe because I grew up smelling and tasting all the Italian fennel or anise liqueurs that appeared on our table after dinner. Sweet and bitter are stamps of many Italian childhoods. I grow a cultivated variety of wild fennel in my garden, mainly for its fronds. It has become a perennial there, in upstate New York. Not sure why. Maybe global warming? It grows tall and bushy and attracts Eastern swallowtail caterpillars, which is one of the reasons I plant it. Its fluffy fronds are excellent raw in salads and are a main component of pasta con le sarde, which I make at least once every summer. But the big event is when it goes to seed in the early fall. I cut off its umbrella-like flower stalks, which contain its seeds, and plunge them into Everclear to make my bright green finocchietto, a liqueur stronger and way less sweet than the sticky ones I grew up with. My finocchietto clears the head, and it’s also great worked into a big bowl of mussels with crème fraîche and tarragon.

Spearmint

A few years back I planted Berries and Cream mint, a spearmint cultivar. It jumped pot and is now taking over part of my garden. That’s a good thing. I use a lot of spearmint, especially since I began cooking Sicilian food years ago. Zucchini with anchovies, summer garlic, and fresh mint I make as soon as I see the first zucchini show up at the local farm stands. I just cooked up a pot the other day. Blood oranges, spearmint, a little red onion, salt. It is a dish I wait for every winter.  

Spearmint is soft and sweet, good to just stick your nose into, which I often do. A strange thing happens when you heat spearmint. A caraway taste is released. That’s because both plants carry a molecule called carvone. I like its flavor, but I don’t want it in the forefront, so to preserve a clean mint taste I don’t let the herb stew in a dish. I add it at the last minute instead. And on a sweaty summer day I love grabbing a handful and sticking it into a pitcher of cold water, a glass pitcher so I can admire the herb’s beauty.

Lemon verbena

Its aroma is phenomenal, like pure, clear lemon zest without any of the bitter. But since lemon verbena’s brilliant aroma fades with heat, it’s a waste to add the leaves to a stew or a braise. I’ve learned that the best way to harness its beauty is to mince it raw into a semi-damp cluster. Then you can scatter it over cooked dishes or work it into an ice cream mix. I make a gremolata substituting lemon verbena for the lemon zest, mixing it with Italian parsley, maybe some sage, and fresh garlic. Grilled swordfish with that is a wonderful thing.

Bay leaf

If I tear a fresh bay leaf in half and bring it up to my nose and sniff it in, I sense a softness of atmosphere, a gentle mix of pine and thyme. Some people say bay leaves have no flavor. That’s just crazy. Maybe those dried-out things you buy in jars don’t offer much, but since now you can find fresh bay leaves year-round at many supermarkets, there’s no excuse for those. I like to use a few bay leaves to perfume a chicken broth that will go into risotto, and I often add the leaves to a winter tomato sauce. A dish I learned years ago from Giuliano Bugialli and still make often is baked ricotta lined with bay leaves, a lot of bay leaves. Their perfume penetrates the entire cheese. I love it drizzled with honey and served warm. Make sure you deal with true bay, with the fatter, more rounded leaves. The long, tapered California bay leaves can be harsh.

Italian parsley

After traditional Genoese pesto, my second favorite pesto is made with all Italian parsley, almonds, a little grana Padano, and fresh summer garlic. I love Italian parsley’s clean, slightly black pepper taste. I use it so often with seafood that I sometimes taste a fishy undertone when I bite a leaf, but I don’t think that actually exists. It’s just a brain jump. Have you ever tried making a salad of all Italian parsley? I eat that alone, dressed with good olive oil and a few drops of sherry wine vinegar. It tastes surprisingly deep to me. It also makes a great bed for roasted chicken.

And now for the recipe . . .

As you can see above I happened to buy one very large skate wing, which I knew would be difficult the cook and flip without breaking. I had a lucky flip, and it stayed in one piece. I’d suggest that for this recipe you get two smaller wings to make your life easier.

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