Pleasure principle
Published date | 01 May 2021 |
Publication title | Paisley Daily Express |
"It's the unnecessary brilliance of [using herbs] that just makes you want to eat this delightful thing and get pleasure from it."
" And so we actually do very much need herbs on our plates and growing windowsills, and Mark, food writer, photographer and creator of Otter Farm - a nursery designed to encourage people to grow "unusual and forgotten food" - is very willing to share his afection for herbs.
"We're the only species on earth that cooks," he continues. "We're doing it for two reasons. One is to transform foods into something that's edible, you know, just plain old 'I can eat that/That's not going to kill me and/or I'm not going to lose my teeth trying to get through it'. But once you've got to that point, the rest really is about pleasure."
Herbs provide "that little tweak" that can amp up a dish or morph its character slightly - take Mark's bread and butter pudding. Laced with standard thyme he says it takes on a "Novemberish" feel, whereas lemon thyme connotes April.
Despite his adoration for most of them, Mark does not indiscriminately enjoy all edible shoots. In Herb: A Cook's Companion, the follow up to his 2019 cookbook, Sour, he rages amiably at the ubiquitous one leaf of parsley garnish ("It's, 'I thought about you, but I didn't think about you enough..."') and rails at being presented with whole mint leaves to eat ("they're just unpleasant in the mouth").
The problem is, most of us get "stuck" with the herbs that we use. Mark nods to the usual suspects, mint, coriander, rosemary, thyme and parsley - which in a doublewhammy of going through the motions, as we also tend to use them repeatedly in the same old ways. It means we're accessing only a "tiny little sliver" of the green fronds we could be eating.
"If you get to grips with herbs just a little - and they're very easy to get to grips with - then it could change your food like nothing else," he says. ""hese are the clothes that dress up the plainer ingredients. You're in for a fair bit of fun with them."
" Pairing them in diferent combinations, or chucking them into dishes at varied moments during cooking could make a real impact, he reckons. For instance, when making mint sauce, Mark doubles the mint; dousing the bulk of it in water, sugar and vinegar, and then topping it with finely shredded fresh before serving for extra zing.
Another...
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