The Herbfarm Cookbook - Hardcover

Traunfeld, Jerry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684839768 ISBN 13: 9780684839769

Publisher: Scribner, 2000

Synopsis

Not so long ago, parsley was the only fresh herb available to most American cooks. Today, bunches of fresh oregano and rosemary can be found in nearly every supermarket, basil and mint grow abundantly in backyards from coast to coast, and garden centers offer pots of edible geraniums and lemon thyme. But once these herbs reach the kitchen, the inevitable question arises: Now what do I do with them? Here, at last, is the first truly comprehensive cookbook to cover all aspects of growing, handling, and cooking with fresh herbs.

Jerry Traunfeld grew up cooking and gardening in Maryland, but it wasn't until the 1980s, after he had graduated from the California Culinary Academy and was working at Jeremiah Tower's Stars restaurant in San Francisco, that he began testing the amazing potential of herb cuisine. For the past decade, Jerry Traunfeld has been chef at The Herbfarm, an enchanted restaurant surrounded by kitchen gardens and tucked into the rainy foothills of the Cascade Mountains, east of Seattle. His brilliant nine-course herb-inspired menus have made reservations at the Herbfarm among the most coveted in the country.

Eager to reveal his magic to home cooks, Jerry Traunfeld shares 200 of his best recipes in The Herbfarm Cookbook. Written with passion, humor, and a caring for detail that makes this book quite special, The Herbfarm Cookbook explains everything from how to recognize the herbs in your supermarket to how to infuse a jar of honey with the flavor of fresh lavender. Recipes include a full range of dishes from soups, salads, eggs, pasta and risotto, vegetables, poultry, fish, meats, breads, and desserts to sauces, ice creams, sorbets, chutneys, vinegars, and candied flowers. On the familiar side are recipes for Bay Laurel Roasted Chicken and Roasted Asparagus Salad with Fried Sage explained with the type of detail that insures the chicken will be moist and suffused with the flavor of bay and the asparagus complemented with the delicate crunch of sage. On the novel side you will find such unusual dishes as Oysters on the Half Shell with Lemon Varbana Ice and Rhubarb and Angelica Pie.

A treasure trove of information, The Herbfarm Cookbook contains a glossary of 27 of the most common culinary herbs and edible flowers; a definitive guide to growing herbs in a garden, a city lot, or on a windowsill; a listing of the USDA has hardiness zones; how to harvest, clean, and store fresh herbs; a Growing Requirements Chart, including each herb's life cycle, height, pruning and growing needs, and number of plants to grow for an average kitchen; and a Cooking with Fresh Herbs Chart, with parts of the herb used, flavor characteristics, amount of chopped herb for six servings, and best herbal partners.

The Herbfarm Cookbook is the most complete, inspired, and useful book about cooking with herbs ever written.

-8 pages of finished dishes in full color

-16 full-page botanical watercolors in full color

About this title

About the Author

Jerry Traunfeld is executive chef of The Herbfarm, where he combines a passion for cooking with a love of gardening. He teaches popular classes on cooking with fresh herbs and grows his own supply on a small city lot in Seattle, Washington.

Reviews

In his debut cookbook, Traunfeld elevates herbs to celebrity status. Chef at the Herbfarm restaurant near Seattle, he marries friendly flavors (Tomato and Fennel Soup, which includes French tarragon, and Pork Chops with Sage, Onion and Prosciutto). He also employs unusual and bold strokes to create such tantalizing dishes as Oysters on the Half-Shell with Lemon Verbena Ice, Potatoes with Lavender and Rosemary, Grilled Marjoram-Scented Corn, Saut?ed Duck Breasts with Mint, Coriander, and Olives and Halibut Baked with Leeks, Apple and Lovage. Pointing out that herbs and flowers are nothing new in dessert-making, Traunfeld is particularly successful with sweets; he combines flavors with a masterful touch, exemplified by Pear, Maple and Rosemary Clafouti, Pumpkin-Bay Tart and Raspberry and Rose Geranium Sorbet. A summer's abundance of herbs can be persuaded to satisfy well after autumn's frosts with such fare as Apple-Thyme Jelly, Plum and Lavender Chutney and Candied Angelica. Several herb-based drinks are also provided, including the Herbfarm Champagne Cocktail, wherein a single herb leaf or sprig is crushed between the fingers, dropped into an empty champagne flute, then filled with the proper potable. Concluding the book is an extensive chapter outlining individual herbs and their cultivars as well as advice on growing and harvesting them. With herbs increasingly common in supermarkets, this compendium of recipes and useful facts is ideal for cooks eager for new taste temptations. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt

When I first learned to cook, at age eleven, my mother kept herbs in jars,alphabetically arranged on a shelf. I was taught to apportion thesedusty-smelling powders and flakes with the precision of a chemist ? oneteaspoon of oregano in the tomato sauce, one-quarter teaspoon of tarragon in thevegetable soup, one-half teaspoon of sage with the chicken ? as if alchemywould occur when a recipe's formula was followed perfectly. It never occurred tome then that we could grow all these herbs in our backyard, and I had no ideahow they looked or smelled before they were dried, processed, and packaged. Atthe time, the only fresh herb in the supermarket was parsley.

Now fresh herbs are everywhere. More often than not the word "fresh" precedesthyme, tarragon, or basil in recipes we see in print. Freshly cut sprigs of allcommon herbs are available year-round in supermarkets across the nation.Farmers' markets are flooded with lush bunches of locally grown herbs, andgarden centers and specialty nurseries are packed with potted herbs fromangelica to verbena. More and more backyards have oregano and dill planted nextto the tomatoes, and pots of chives and rosemary are replacing the petunias onthe patio or terrace. This availability is making a fundamental change in theway we cook.

The flavor of a fresh herb has little in common with what comes in a jar. Tastea few flakes of dry tarragon and they will seem little more than mild and musty.Then taste a leaf of fresh tarragon, just picked from the garden; it will besweet and peppery and fill your mouth with a punchy anise flavor underscoredwith green savoriness. Stir a coarsely chopped spoonful of the fresh leaves intoa braising pan of chicken and its flavor will permeate the juices and flavor thechicken itself. Next, compare a spoonful of dried basil with a bunch of freshGenovese basil from the farmers' market. The flakes are insipid and lifeless,but the complex layering of mint, clove, anise, and cinnamon scents that waftfrom the fresh sprigs is so enticing you'll want to bury yourself in them. Poundthe leaves in a mortar with garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, andParmigiano-Reggiano, and you'll have fragrant, unctuous pesto, the nonpareilpasta sauce.

Fresh herbs offer an astounding palette of vibrant and glorious tastes, buttheir delights go beyond the flavors they lend to food. For a cook, there is joyin simply handling fresh herbs in the kitchen. Who can resist stroking the proudsticky needles of rosemary, rubbing a plush sage leaf, or crushing a crinkledleaf of verdant mint between their fingers? When you strip the fragrant leavesoff sweet marjoram or tuck a few sprigs of shrubby thyme in a simmering stew,you feel connected to the soil and the season, no matter where your kitchen is.

I have the opportunity all chefs dream of. As chef of The Herbfarm Restaurant inthe lush, rainy foothills of the Cascade Mountains, I design nine-course menusfor an intimate dining room surrounded by acres of kitchen gardens. If I need abunch of chives, a bucket of chervil, or a leaf of rose geranium, I pick itright outside. Over the course of my nine years at The Herbfarm and many yearsof herb gardening in my own backyard in Seattle, I've come to know each herb asan old friend, and they have offered me endless inspiration. I've written thisbook to share what I have learned about these soul-stirring ingredients withthose who love to cook at home.

Copyright © 2000 Jerry Traunfeld. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-684-83976-8

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684839768
• ISBN 13: 9780684839769
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448