Bring on the Herbs

Method

For the sauce: a generous bunch of fresh mixed herbs – parsley, sage, thyme, oregano, mint, rosemary, basil etc

Place the herbs in a deep frying pan and cover well with olive oil – this means using quite a lot of oil. Heat the pan gently and let the herbs cook gently for as long as you can. Allow to cool a little, then strain the oil into a large pyrex bowl, discarding the now brittle, cooked herbs. Now add the tomatoes, the passata, the garlic, nutmeg and seasoning to the oil. Stir everything together very gently until all the ingredients are well blended – this will take a while, so be patient. Add the fresh basil and let the sauce cool. Left in the fridge overnight, the flavours will really mature beautifully.

Cook your pasta as usual and serve with the cold sauce, adding grated cheese over the top. It’s a winner, though I wouldn’t like to vouch for its living up to its name!

At last I seem to have eliminated those malicious snails I discovered were enjoying my greenhouse parsley under cover of darkness each night! Why they prefer parsley - especially my treasured flat-leafed variety – to all the other greenery on offer in my garden, I do not know, but I am wishing they were snails of the edible variety, so that I could really get my own back. Still, they have bitten the dust now and I have been able to produce a fresh parsley sauce this evening, so all is well.

Some herbs have really flourished for me this summer so far, in particular mint and basil, whilst my rosemary, sage and thyme all look a little sick. I derive such pleasure from having various herbs to hand in the garden, and from tasting how they can transform the most simple of dishes into a new and exciting experience (just the tickets for cooks such as me!). My daughter and her partner demonstrated this very thing just recently; firstly with a really interesting mint and vegetables mix to accompany a (most delicious) chicken pie. Liz cooked up new potatoes, broccoli and peas separately and after draining them, mashed them together roughly and added chopped mint (she also uses mint sauce for this). The resulting green heaps on our plates were surprisingly refreshing and good to look at.

Shaun then served us a super mango and basil dessert. For 4 servings, he used 2 mangoes, a handful of roughly torn basil leaves, and one lime. He removed and discarded the mango skins and diced the flesh. He then placed the fruit pieces into dessert bowls, sprinkled on the basil, drizzled juice from the lime over the top, reserving small slices of lime to place in each bowl. So quick, so easy and so refreshing!

Whenever my herb garden is well underway, I regularly make this sauce for pasta, because it uses pretty much all of them. The original recipe came from my sister, but I have adapted it a little to make it simpler. It involves quite a lot of nutmeg, the potency of which apparently gives the sauce its name …

Mrs Trewhitless