August 9, 2005
Ground Work: Pantry Neccessities 101a - Savory Herbs
Here’s the first in yet another short series of articles, this time centered on what ingredients to have around the house. A lot of people have come to eat at my place and marvelled, “How did you find out about (insert semi-obscure condiment or ingredient here)? I’ve never heard anything about it or seen it in a store..”. 98% of the goodies I count among my secret weapons have been found by simply taking risks.
If I see an herb that I can’t identify at a store, I buy a sprig (or, pick a leaf if I’m feeling naughty) and try it out. If there’s a vegetable I’m intrigued by, I grab one. Don’t bet the farm, just get one. It might be the nastiest tasting thing since pickled pig’s lips, or it might change your life- just make a note of what it is in case you love it and can’t recall its name.
In this installment I’ll be beginning my commentary about my favorite flavor group, savory, known to some asians and too-cool sophisticates as “Umami”. Nothing saves an anemic-tasting dish, nothing satisfies the soul, nothing gives substance to the weak like something savory. Here I’ll be outlining some herbs and spices that can give you savory in a hurry, in a variety of different shades. This is nothing like a definitive list! Anything that I’m sure you already know all about, I’ve omitted (garlic, for example). You probably know of most of these, but maybe you haven’t cooked with them yet, or cooked with them fresh. *smirk*
I generally buy fresh cilantro, basil, tumeric and galanga every week (I can’t stop cooking Thai food), and keep a good stock of dried oregano, and cumin seeds around. When I run out of any of these things, I go into a form of shock, at least until I can drag myself 2 doors down to the convenient but hilariously overpriced grocery shop down the street.
Most of the fresh herbs can (and really, really should) be bought organic. The taste difference between conventional and organic for things like herbs ranges from “pretty noticable” to “night and day”.
1. Cilantro - A life saver in so many ways. A small handful, washed and roughly chopped, brings a heady, aromatic complexity to just about any dish. Cilantro is savory in a round, sweet way, but can also be piquant, almost sharp. Throwing it into a dish early on will emphasize its warm, dark aspects, while adding it just after the heat is turned off allows its brighter notes to shine through. I often add some early on in the cooking and some at the end to strike a balance.
2. Basil - Another fresh herb to keep around religiously. Doing so is a bit of a problem, because most basil has a useful refrigerated life of what seems like approximately 43 nanoseconds (probably more like 3 days). It wilts, it turns a nasty brown color, it falls from grace, and is gone. So you either go ape-sh** with the pesto-making just before the decline, or you hang the last remaining decent bits up in the window to dry just before they go south. Home-dried basil is worlds better than the jarred trash most of us have some of hovering uselessly in the back of a cupboard, but it’s got nothin’ on fresh. So… What to do?
Get all non-American and hit the produce market every other day? Cry? Well… Lately I’ve been on the Thai kick from hell so I’ve been buying Thai basil, that purple-stemmed, mint-kissed variety that’s difficult to find outside of Thai and Korean markets, but so very worth it. It doesn’t work terribly well in iconically basil-ic dishes like pesto as the flavor is distincly southeast asian, but it does the trick in nearly everything else, and what’s more it DOESN’T GO BAD (that quickly). It stays usable for more like a week, or even a week and a half, and it tastes fabulous. Try some!
Basil, to me, is sort of indescribable- but you know what it tastes like, mostly I want to impress upon you the importance of buying it fresh.
3. Oregano seems to take better to drying than most herbs. If you can find it fresh, go for it, and just hang it up to dry after a few days. If you find it jarred by somebody reputable, have at it. The chief reason I don’t go to the trouble of keeping fresh oregano around is that I simply don’t use much of it. You’ve got to have it for marinara sauce and a few other notable dishes, and it’s wonderful for adding a very earthy, lush touch to a dish. It tends to go well with other strong flavors, or, in small doses, to “herb up” creamy sauces or soups, much like rosemary.
4. Cumin - I tend to keep a jar of cumin seeds around, and they’re always finding use. Throw 5 or 10 into your cooking oil as it heats. When they start to pop, the oil is hot (and now, flavored quite nicely). Add your food! Cumin is yet another entrancing aromatic flavor, with a distinct nuttiness that recalls happy memories of really good mexican, indian, and middle-eastern food. Some folks go for ground cumin, but it doesn’t do much for me. Maybe I should try mortar-and-pestle grinding my own.
5. Tumeric is used primarily as a colorant, and color it does, turning everything from bok choy to shallots a vibrant, lovely, egyptian-tile yellow. The ground, jarred type is just fine for that, and has a muted, dark flavor when used liberally. The fresh variant, looking very much like skinny little ginger, colors even more beautifully and imparts even more flavor- a certain grassy, fresh, earthy tang. Well worth looking for.
6. Galanga - A quintessentially Thai ingredient, looking like large, bright-tan ginger (all dems roots look alike, I say). It tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike ginger. Its flavor is not really what you’d call savory in the traditional sense- chewed straight it’s rather medicinal, numbing, tangy, bitter. When it is cooked with food (a great example is the thai soups Tom Kha and Tom Yum, in which galanga almost dominates), it imparts tremendous depth and a refreshing but substantial presence.
7. Whole Peppercorns are manna from the gods. Cracked, they represent one of the only universally useful spices. Can you think of a (non-dessert) food that wouldn’t taste better with a little pepper? As outlined in post #2, having a pepper grinder, even a cheap one, is one of the better favors you can do yourself. Pepper, too, is helped quite a bit by pre-heating in your cooking oil or being dry-roasted in a pan with your other chosen spices before going into a dish.
8. Rosemary - If you’re lucky, somebody in your neighborhood has some growing in their front yard and you can serruptiously gank a sprig or two. If not, most well-stocked markets sell the fresh stuff, which is (broken record much) the only kind worth getting, really. It is astringent in a pleasant way, slightly citrusy, sour, savory, dark, light.. It’s a lot of things. Cook it in a slow-cooked dish and you get a sumptuous result. Chop it extremely finely, flip it around in a very dry hot frying pan for 20 seconds or so with a pinch of sea salt, and it makes a nice little addition to baked potatoes, buttered pasta, garlic bread et al.
9. Dried Red Chili, Chinese or Thai - Why do these commonly come in 10,000,000lb bags? I can’t see myself making it through my current bag by 2010. It’s just huge. Anyhow, they’re needed for making Thai red curry paste, they can liven up a dish with toasty, yummy flavors and of course, add heat. I love them. Add them to a cooking dish whole (and either leave them in or remove before serving) for maximum flavor with minimum heat, chop coarsely and discard seeds for a bit more heat, or finely mince seeds-n-all to blow your face off.
So why all of these roads to what seems like the same goal? Why should you keep so much crap around when you’re just learning to cook? Well, the subtleties of why each of these is really important will come to you with time and tasting, but really the main reason to fill the house with such choices is that in becoming familiar with them, you can start to unravel what goes into the flavors you love in the food you’ve been eating all of your life. I had NO idea how somebody could take coconut milk, mushrooms, and shallots and make something that can literally make everything right in the world for me, (Thom Kha Het soup) until I really grok’ed what galanga, lemongrass and lime leaves were about. I had no idea why some salsa was alright and some bowled me over until i really got to know cilantro, cumin, and chipotle peppers (not to mention limes.. ooh boy..).
It’s all part of forging your own culinary signature and finding your way towards gastronomic bliss. Know thy ingredients, or thou shalt be doomed to repeatedly make sh**y food.
The next installment will cover savory sauces/condiments. To my mind, they’re every bit as important as the herbs outlined above, especially a notable threesome- tune in for the deets, peeps! 
Yours in umami,
-GC
Filed under: Ingredients
August 10th, 2005 at 11:57 am
mmmmm, what’s for dinner tonight? =)
August 10th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
Man, I have no idea.. I think I want tacos of some variety. Tacos with shallot-sauteed globe eggplants and king oyster mushrooms in ‘em.
Yum.