Easy Herbs: 3/15: Tarragon

Fifteen Easy Herbs
No. 3 Tarragon
If you have room for only one herb plant, make it Artemisia dracunculus. It’s easy to grow, and enticing in so many foods. A bit of interesting etymology: the Latin dracunculus means “little dragon” as does the French estragon, hence the English tarragon. Who named this innocent plant? Is it because of its serpentine root system? Or because the anise or licorice-like flavor numbs your tongue in a scary way? If you are interested in herbal lore you’ll enjoy researching the uses of tarragon through the ages.

How to grow it:
This is the easy part. Tarragon is a perennial: buy a plant at the nursery, plant it in your sunny spot in rich, well-drained soil, and it stays there for years! It hunkers down in winter (goes dormant); this is when you cut off the dead stems. Then new stems grow in early spring. What could be easier? You can even cut pieces of the branches that have become woody by early summer, stick them in the ground or in a flowerpot, and grow more plants! Get the French variety; a plant labeled Russian tarragon won’t have as much flavor.

How to eat it:
Eat it fresh or cooked—this is easy, too. Tarragon flavors so many foods well: vinegar, tuna (pile it on a tuna sandwich and let it burn your tongue!), savory sauces (especially bernaise), meats, vegetables, dairy foods, poultry (put a few tarragon branches inside a chicken before roasting) and salad dressings.
Next herb: Lemon Balm, to make your own soothing herb tea.

Tarragon Vinegar
Fresh tarragon branches
Apple cider vinegar

Use a clean bottle or jar with a lid or cork closure. (You can use a vinegar bottle, a pop bottle, a water bottle, a liquor bottle, whatever you want, and label it.) Stuff it full of tarragon branches, and fill with vinegar to cover all the leaves. Close the lid. Set it on a sunny windowsill for a couple of weeks, then store in the pantry. Use tarragon vinegar in any recipe listing cider vinegar and it subs well for wine vinegar, too.

Tarragon Chicken
1 fryer chicken, cut up
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
1/4 cup minced onion
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, brown the chicken pieces in butter with 1 tablespoon of the fresh tarragon. Remove the chicken and reserve.
Sauté the onion in the pan drippings until soft. Stir in the wine, salt and pepper.
Return the chicken to the skillet, spoon the wine mixture over it, and cover. Reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes, until chicken is almost tender.
Whisk the flour and milk together thoroughly. Increase heat under the skillet until the liquid is bubbling. Add the milk mixture, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens and bubbles. Stir in the remaining tablespoon of tarragon. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes. Serve with rice. Serves 4.

Easy Herbs: 2/15: Dill

Fifteen Easy Herbs
No. 2 Dill
In the beginning there was dill. Then the cucumbers and fish were created. But dill came first; it’s the horse and carriage story, with dill and cukes, dill & fish, dill & salad.

How to grow it:
Although this is another annual that has to be planted every year from seed, it’s no trouble at all. Just like cilantro, it will thrive in a moderately rich (use lots of organic matter) soil in a sunny spot. Don’t allow the soil to dry out, but it shouldn’t stay soggy, either. Sow dill seeds in spring as soon as frost danger has passed, where they are to grow.

How to eat it:
Stuff the flowers, stems and leaves into the pickle jars. Strew the whole platter of fish with dill. Chop up lots of it for the potato salad or cucumber and onion salad. In short, plant lots of dill! If you grow too much of the stuff, freeze it in plastic bags, because dried dill has no flavor. Save the seeds for next year, and you may have some left to plant if you haven’t used them all up in bread over the winter.
Next time: Tarragon, the little dragon.

Dill Gribiche Sauce

Serve on hot or cold salmon or as a sandwich spread or salad dressing. Adapted from Fresh Herb Cooking by Linda Dannenberg. Stewart Tabori & Chang, New York. 2001.
1 egg
1 tablespoon dill vinegar*
1 tablespoon pickle juice (from dill or sweet pickles)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 packed cup parsley leaves
1 cup coarsely chopped dill, with stems
1/3 cup capers
2 cups canola oil
4 shallots
3 medium-sized crunchy dill pickles
2 hard-boiled eggs, cooled and peeled

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add the raw egg, cover, and remove from the heat. Let it stand for 6 minutes, then remove the egg and crack it into the bowl of a food processor. Add the vinegar, pickle juice and salt; process for 5 minutes. Add the parsley and dill and process for 5 minutes. Add the capers, then with the processor running, gradually add the oil in a thin stream, until the mixture is thick but still pourable. If it’s too thick, stir in a dash of pickle juice.
Finely mince the shallots, and dice the pickles. Using a coarse grater (the big holes), shred the hard-boiled eggs. (This is much easier than chasing a slippery egg around on a cutting board.) Stir these into the sauce and season to taste with pickle juice or vinegar. Refrigerate in a sealed plastic container.
*How do I come by dill vinegar? You might ask. Stuff a clean bottle with dill stems, and fill with apple cider vinegar. Put the lid on (or cork stopper), and set it in a sunny windowsill for a couple of weeks, before storing it in the pantry. In a pinch, you can substitute apple cider vinegar in this recipe.