Weekend Herb Blogging #67 round-up: Dill 5 Onions nil

Overwhelmingly dill seem to be the favoured herb this week although thyme, chillis/peppers and olives also seem popular.

And what have we learned? Perhaps most importantly that dill relieves gas (who me?), colic in babies, induces sleep and wards off witches. Also it is possibly to make soup without onions.
I might also add that we have (I think) five entries from Melbourne, testament to this city’s obsession with food as well as its multicultural roots.
And wow, who can believe we are 67 weeks into Weekend Herb Blogging and I’m lucky enough to be the overlord this week. I’m afraid pictures disagreed with my particular set-up of Wordpress – as did the WHB logo. If anybody has been left out or any links don’t work (something weird has been happening with some) please let me know.

Sandeepa at Bong Mom’s Cookbook’s email went AWOL but she’s in now and has found a site dedicated to cilantro (coriander) haters even though she loves the stuff. She uses it in the masala for a Spicy egg bake, a recipe from her husband, a quinessential “Bangal” – that’s a Bengali whose ancestors can be traced to East Bengal – being a great cook. “Coriander has been used as a folk medicine for the relief of anxiety and insomnia in Iranian folk medicine. Experiments in mice support its use as an anxiolytic. Coriander essential oil showed a delay in E. Coli growth, suggesting possible agricultural anti-bacterial applications.”

Kate from Daily Unadventures in Cooking was the first entry to Weekend Herb Blogging with one of those marriages made in heaven, a salmon and caper salad. The recipe was inspired by the Barefoot Contessa cookbook and also uses plenty of fresh dill. “This recipe spotlights dill which is a classic combination with salmon. I tried growing dill myself last year, but was not successful. With a little bit of research I have just learned that there is a specific kind of dill which only grows to 18 inches called Fernleaf and is suited to indoor growing.”

Sue from Coffee & Cornbread finds another way to use dill in her dilly meat and dumpling soup. This is a nourishing soup based on a chicken stock. “Dill is thought to help relieve colic in babies. I wish I had known that several years ago, but entering and research for WHB has supplied me with the info in anticipation of my grandkids.”

Asha at Aroma is making a red lentil dill soup with dill cream as her first ever contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging. A warming dish for cold day.
Sometimes a vegetable needs a bit of help to come alive. “The name “dill” is thought to have originated from a Norse or Anglo-Saxon word ‘dylle’ meaning to soothe or lull, the plant having the carminative property of relieving gas.”

Glenda at A Fridge Full of Food gets that help with some chicken stock, pecans and bacon with Not your momma’s glazed carrots. “I had a wild craving for glazed carrots the other day which surprised me because as a child I loved my mother’s glazed carrots but when I made them years later as an adult they seemed like squishy orange yuck drowned in maple syrup. Don’t get me wrong. My mom was a fantastic cook. It’s just that everyone used to make glazed carrots basically the same way: cook the carrots and add butter and brown sugar. Fini.”

Neil from At My Table, who lives just around the corner from me in St Kilda, makes Lecso, a dish made out of pure vitamin C thanks to all the capsicum/bell peppers used – ideal for all those iced-up northern hemisphere bloggers fighting off wintery colds. “When Hungarians say paprika they could mean two things, either the fresh pods of the pepper plant or the spice obtained from drying and grinding the pods. Outside of Mexico from where peppers, or as they are better known chillies, first originated, it is hard to think of a country that values both the heat and flavour of peppers as much as Hungarians do…”

Claudia at Fool For Food is serving Gorgonzola-Polenta mit Spinat und Steinpilzen which translated means polenta with gorgonzola, spinach, cepes and chives.

Yich of Sim Cooks uses one of my favourite ingredients lemongrass which chops up and bashes with the back of her knife to make Tom Yum Goong (Prawns) Soup. “Lemon grass is also known by the name Citronella. Citronella oil is used in soaps, as a mosquito repellent in insect sprays and candles, and also in aromatherapy. It is known to have a calming effect that relieves insomnia or stress.”

The Chocolate Lady – that’s Eve I Believe – is using her new Japanese contraption to “help your cooking fast joyfully with wonderful edged strings”. I want one! Anyway she’s making a salad with torn shreds and I believe may be dabbling in dill as well a cilantro and parsley. “Even when it is this cold (We got down to nine degrees Fahrenheit in New York this week, and it was thirty below in Deering, fifty-two below with the wind chill, or “below fifty-two” as they say up there) you still sometimes need salads.”

Ros at Living to eat! has set her font to rhubarb colour and is even cooking with the stuff – Duck with ginger and rhubarb compote. It turns out she is a fruit and duck nut. “Yay, pink! \o/ The crazy pink colour of the compote was enough to get Goon to try some. The gingery flavour alonside the tanginess was enough to keep him eating it. Who needs artifical colours and flavours when you’ve got stem ginger and rhubarb?”

Carolyn over at Field to feast the African is inspired this week comes in the form of a well-herbed couscous from a well loved cook book. The book in question is Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian – Madhur Jaffrey is also one of my favourite cooks. “This recipe, a Tunisian dish, attracted my attention with its use of four fresh herbs – cilantro, dill, parsley and arugula – but it remained untried simply because I could never accumulate all of the ingredients at one time.”

The News from my kitchen – Helene’s at least – is olives or in German oliven. “Almost forgotten the olives rested in salted water for a while. But now after the first frost I will combine them. The theme is colourful: dark red the olives, red the pepper, green lime and olive herbs.” Take a look, I think the font may be olive-coloured.

Still on olives, Gattina over at The Kitchen Unplugged is rustling up green olive artichoke pizza. “The day when I made this pizza, there were two young kids (I do baby-sitting occasionally, that’s how I got my little model to hold that heart candy) totally crazy for the crust that dizzled with this oil allover.”

Ceviz at Only Turkish Food is a new Melbourne food blog to me. This week’s offering us Turkish red lentil balls. “These red lentil balls originate from eastern and south-eastern regions of Turkey. They are easy to make, and are delicious. Wrapping them in lettuce leaves brings out the flavours.” She also has another foodblog written in Turkish.

Astrid at Paulchen’s Foodblog is chomping on Rosemary-tarragon potatoes & roasted coriander-cumin cauliflower. “Rosemary has been found to be a stimulant and mild analgesic, and has been used to treat headaches, poor circulation, and many ailments for which stimulants are prescribed.”

Zoe at Puku – it’s inside that counts – is making a tropical fruit salad. in her first flood blog event. She’s nervous but shouldn’t be as she’s picked the strange and interesting dragonfuit which actually come from a cactus. I didn’t know that although I’ve been stuffing myself with it for the past month. Puku is another new Australian blog from Townsville in Queensland – that’s up near the great Barrier Reef. Just to confuse things Zoe comes from New Zealand: “The puku is the belly. the word is te reo Maori the language/tongue of my homeland and one part of my whakapapa (ancestry).”

Anh is also from Melbourne and and has some great Vietnamese recipes on her blog, Food Lover’s Journey. Today though she’s chosen a tasty Chickpea and lamb stew. Everybody assumes it is hot in Melbourne but the reality is that it is unpredictable and this is an ideal meal for a cold summers day. “Although the stew uses varieties of herbs and spices, I would love to feature about chickpeas (or garbanzo as called in the US) for this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging. They have a beautiful nutty flavour and a crisp texture. The beans are high fibre and protein. Highly nutritious, chickpeas are also low in fat and most of their fat content is monounsaturated.”

Apparently it is amazing what Genie at The inadvertent gardener will do for a good tomato. I’m afraid I’m a rather rotten one.
Her quick turkey soup is made from the detritus of Thanksgiving usually. “This year, in the madness that was Thanksgiving clean-up, the turkey carcass didn’t survive. But I did end up with four cups of dark and light turkey meat in a container in my freezer, and last weekend, took advantage of a snowy day to stay inside and make a quicker version of the famous soup.”

Back to Turkey as in Turkish with Burcu’s Almost Turkish Recipes. We are talking Kaygana which is a turkish omelette. “There was a small authentic restaurant that served only Black Sea region food on the way to Sumela Monastery, in Trabzon province, and they served us kaygana along with other numerous delicious local food. Since I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with eggs, I was reluctant to taste it at first. But then it became my favorite egg dish. After our trip I couldn’t find kaygana anywhere else, and that’s why I believed it was a Black Sea dish; however, from Marianna Yerasimos’ 500 Hundred Years of Ottoman Cuisine I learned that kaygana is an old Ottoman dish.”

Ulrike at Küchenlatein is tempting me with Chicken curry with scallions, peanuts and parsley. She not a fan of coriander – cilantro – so substitutes it with parsley. A neat trick.

Katie at Thyme for cooking, the blog is cooking Salmon en Croute with Tarragon Cream Sauce which features, you didn’t guess it, dill. “The seeds, which are actually the fruit, are a must in dill pickles. The leaves or fronds, are, for some obscure reason, known as dillweed or dill weed. It’s medicinal use was to help induce sleep and it’s practical uses were as a ward against witches and (very important bit coming up) to fend off the ‘evil eye’. I, personally, am going to start wearing a garland of dill whenever I work on my computer.”

Andrea over at Buy Organic tells us about silver foliage herbs, the top five being sage, lavender, variegated society garlic, silver thyme and catnip. “Silver foliage herbs are some of the most beautiful, tasty, and useful herbs. They make great displays, either planted en mass or used as hedges. They have many culinary uses but also play an important role in an organic garden as companion plants.”

Sherry from What did you eat? has chosen a hearty vegetable soup featuring thyme. “The thyme, rosemary and bay leaf all worked together to give the soup a wonderful flavor, but I chose thyme as my herb of choice. I’m quite fond of thyme. Last year, I planted common thyme in my garden and it’s flourished there.” She’s lucky. Last week mine died.

Rachel’s Bite this week is Creole sausage and shrimp which uses thyme. “My normal practice is to chop the herbs stems and all. Those thyme stems are some tough suckers! I kept chopping and chopping and they wouldn’t break down fine enough. I brought out the knife but they just weren’t cooperating. So my advise is to take the time to pull the leaves off of the stems when working with thyme.”

My kitchen: my laboratory’s Angie doesn’t really like tomatoes, apart from the cherry ones. Still she’s chosen them as her topic for Weekend Herb Blogging. “Anyway, these little fruits make a healthy snack, just wash and pop them into your mouth. But I prefer them slightly cooked, whereby when you bite into them, the skin just gives way to a mouthful of fresh tomato juice. How can you beat that?”

Ruth at Once upon a feast goes Mexican-style. “…although I do love quesadillas, I’m not sure if the ones I make are authentic. There is one truly Mexican dish I adore though – Mole de Pollo (chicken stewed in a rich, spicy, chocolate gravy). I first had it on my honeymoon in Mexico and I drool every time I think about it.”

Despite frozen pipes and heavy snow Kalyn – who as the architect of all this Weekend Herb Blogging needs no introduction – is offering Tomatilla soup with the dreaded cilantro (coriander). I must admit I’ve never cooked with a Tomatilla and probably never eaten one. Kalyn says: “I just love the flavor of this intesting fruit which is called husk tomato, jamberry, husk cherry, mexican tomato, or ground cherry in different parts of the world. It’s easily recognizable from the husk that surrounds the fruit. Tomatillos are the key ingredient in fresh and cooked Latin American green sauces, and the flavor is sharp, slightly lemony, and tart.”

Arfi from Homemades in New Zealand has some wonderfully rustic looking garlic. “My favourite herb is allium family, which is both considered as vegetables and herbs…It’s known that this genus consists of over 700 species which can be grown all over the world in temperate climates, which have similar appearance and smell.”

Freya is Writing at the kitchen table, has no onions left and wants to make soup. “No onions in the house is a very poor state of affairs and a state that no one should ever be in. Thank goodness I had a couple of rapidly shrivelling leeks left. There was no carrots, no peppers, just a bunch of celery. So, with the celery and leeks in mind, I flipped through Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book. Straight away I am enticed by the Celery and Blue Cheese Soup recipe although I could have gone for Celery and Dill too.”

Among Anna’s cool finds is tropical okara granola (aka muesli). As a person politically opposed to manufactured breakfast cereals this especially appeals. “As you all know, I am having fun and health making my own soy milk and that leaves me with a lot of OKARA – the bran left over from the beans! Okara was taking over my refrigerator, so it was time to come up with another recipe.”

Anna’s scattered selection of thoughts at Morsels & Musings include Camarones en Pipian, a spicy prawn (rather than shrimp) dish made with ancho chillis created especially for Australia Day. “Ancho chillies are dried poblanos and are dark in colour. They have a sweet, smoky, coffee and cocoa flavour (some people think they taste like dried fruit too) and are quite mild on the chilli heat scale. They are used in many traditional recipes like Camarones en Pipian – a Mexican recipe that I, a first generation Australian, cooked for a Japanese friend.”

Little spatula’s Katie, meanwhile, made a Shrimp risotto with sweet peas with leeks. “The leeks are spotlighted in this wonderful risotto and the opportunity to use a variety of herbs such as parsley, chervil, and basil make it fun to prepare. The leeks in this dish lend a delicate onion flavor.”

A 2005 Bolla Soave makes a perfect match for a basil rich Pasta puttanesca over at Wine outlook. Farley says: “It’s fast and fun to make, I usually have the ingredients on hand, and it’s helped launch at least one or two relationships. With a great story, to top it off. I love how the kitchen immediately smells fantastic as the anchovies and garlic sizzle on the stove and I adore squishing the whole tomatoes between my fingers, tearing them apart. Yet I always hesitate to make it if I don’t have any fresh basil.”

More tomatoes, this time ripe romas from Haalo at Cook Almost Anything Once. She’s pulled together recipe from a couple of local Melbourne chefs to create an impressive pressed tomato soup with basil ice cream. “Tomatoes these days are being heralded as a potential disease buster due to the presence of Lycopene. It’s actually one of the few plants where cooking actually increases the Lycopene content. Lycopene is an anti-oxidant and is thought to help lower the risk of cancer and heart disease.”

Virginie from Absolutely Green is pitching the exotically named Litchis rôtis à la crème de marrons – roasted Lychees with chestnut cream. Apparently this dish is easy to make with the lychees simply fried is sesame oil before mixing them with the chestnut cream.

Cooking in Westchester – the practical, spicy, flavorful way from Rinku is also picking on tomatoes – in a watercress soup with ginger. Watercress appparently is one of the top ten detox foods. “I love soups this time of the year and actually all the year round. There is a quiet simplicity about them, yes, we can make them fussy but overall a few little flavors, a good base and you have a comforting bowlful.”

“Last week my husband mentioned about one of his old Bulgarian friend and later kept bragging about one of the appetizers he had tried at his place and what a delicious combination of flavour it was. So I asked him ”how is it called ?”. He described it as fried zucchini’s with a yogurt dip.” And so Sushma from Recipe source went out in search of Bulgarian zucchini yoghurt dip and found it.

Dave from The serendipitous chef intrigues me with some lusty fruits that are smaller than an orange but smaller than cumquats and pretty sour. “Apparently, unlike kumquats, the skin of the orangquats edible but not really intended to be eaten. And they seem to be more sour than a kumquat. But that could just be this batch of them. The kumquats we got from the same stand were more sour than I expected as well.”

And finally there is me with a basic Greek salad which simply has to be made with dried oregano. “…the name origanum comes from the greek words oros and ganos meaning ‘joy of the mountain’, the fragrant herb growing on mountain slopes.”

Become a Facebook fan. Follow me on Twitter.