Kitchen Happenings: A Green Thumb?

Not a restaurant post, but just a general food posting by a college kid about having good food in a college environment on a college budget. Today's note? Fresh herbs.

One thing that I love is my little herb "garden." It's not so much a garden as it is a big, sturdy 15" plastic bowl with topsoil that sits on the railing of my apartment balcony. It's nice. Right now, I've got some basil, oregano, sage, thyme, chives, green onion, parsley, dill, and rosemary going strong. They each have their own little area in the bowl, which is just enough for what I need for my everyday cooking. I even had little 2 basil plants sprout out so I took them up and re-planted in little pots and I'll give them to my friends when they grow a little more.

So what am I doing with all of this? Well the first thing that I did was make a compound butter spread with the sage. Decided to get more flavor out of the sage, so I actually cooked the sage (chopped) along with some chopped garlic in olive oil under low heat for a while, and then let it cool before I mixed it with a small tub of butter. It's really tasty and spreads easily. I can actually just brush it on with a silicon scraper. Tonight's late dinner? Roasted vidalia onions (brushed a roasting pan with the sage butter, then salt and pepper) and cod fillets (salt and pepper on one side, then brushed with just a little bit of butter on both sides). Simple, tasty, and pretty healthy.

While the fresh herbs (particularly the basil) are great for the obvious, up-front uses (like with simple pizzas with fresh tomatoes or just finishing off dishes). They also add a great underlying taste. I had some extra mushrooms laying around, so I wanted to take a shot at some sort of mushroom pate or similar sort of thing. I decided on using softened cream cheese with some seasoning, but it wasn't quite right. So, a little trip out to the balcony gave me some chives, green onion, and parsley to chop up and work into my spread. Just a nice fresh, bright taste that balanced the earthy flavors from the mushrooms. A great topping for bruschetta.

Speaking of which, another great use for fresh herbs is in vinagrettes. Last week, I found half a jar of olives and some canned tomatoes that needed to be used up. So, into the blender they went. Fresh basil and green onion followed along with some red wine vinegar and olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Halfway through making the vinagrette, I had this thick puree. I made a thinner version for my salad that night, but I wanted to hang on to the thick sauce. It had a lot of potential for grilling as a marinade, so I tried it with chicken. And it worked. But where it was so much nicer was as a topping. I had left it in the fridge overnight, which let it get thicker (the olive oil sort of solidified, I think). I grilled up some bread, and put on a little bit of the mix (once it hit the bread, you could see the oil just melt and spread out a little), and then topping it all with some slices of grilled chicken breast and more of the topping. Excellent grilled chicken bruschetta. Nice bright flavor from the tomatoes, a good herb flavor with some richness from the olives and tang from the vinegar. Good stuff.

Anyway, I think that I'll be reporting a little more out of my kitchen and less from the restaurants (I need to shed about 20 pounds in the near future and about 40 pounds down the road). We'll see. I've got at least 2 writeups that need to get done for restaurants from a while ago. And there are a couple of places that deserve visits and writeups. We'll see how much I can stay away from the eateries

-foodgeek