Greta’s Blog – Cooking with Herbs

Mark Murphy and I enjoyed our recent combined herb growing and cooking event at the Dingle Cookery School. We hope to develop further classes and run a course for chefs on growing herbs next Spring.

I learnt some great tips from Mark on how to finely chop herbs and at what stage of cooking to add them. His lovage and potato soup was delicious, I had made it before but the flavour was over-whelming as I added it too early in the cooking. Lovage has a strong celery-type flavour and a small bunch should be added just 10-15 mins before serving. A swirl of cream adds that final touch of richness.

He made a scrumptious lemon drizzle cake with basil and seaseme seeds. Now who would have ever thought of adding basil to a cake mix but it worked a treat. There is great satisfaction from cooking with herbs; experimenting with lots of flavour combinations and enjoying endless possibilities to excite the palate.

Another great tip was using grated beetroot instead of carrot in a carrot cake- now that was a new one to me. He made lots of herb oils and vinegars which are so easy to prepare and they can be stored for months; these cost a small fortune to buy.

I love making herb butters- try lots of different flavours; such as lemon thyme, parsley, dill, mint and fennel.
A dab of any of these to fish, vegetables, omelets, meats, soups and sauces will elevate your cooking
to another level. Herb butters store for about 2 weeks in the fridge and for several months in the freezer.

My book on herbs is presently at the design stage and should hit the shelves early 2017. I will be doing a crowd funding campaign in August to bring the project to fruition. I will provide further information on this as it progresses.

Www. gretasherbs.com
Greta 086-3169716