I ask your indulgence. And your mercy. I am about to record some things that will provoke widespread disagreement, and occasional outrage…because the theme is pretty much the diametric opposite of a cooking principle most Americans have been taught to embrace. And here it is:
I’ve had it with the over-use of herbs.
Sneer, scoff, strew scorn…but hear me out, because I’m convinced there’s at least a grain of truth in this screed.
Let me present the central part of the argument first, then I’ll proceed to the corollaries…
When I was growing up, the Dad food in my house was always ethnic and adventurous. But the Mom food on which we subsisted from Monday to Thursday was much more of its time and place. There would be, from my Mom, lovely versions of:
*roast chicken
*pot roast
*beef stew
*lamb chops
*baked filets of fish
…and so on.
Now, my Mom was very 50s/60s. She didn’t take cooking classes, or check out classic cookbooks…other than The Settlement Cook Book, originated in the early 20th century by Lizzie Black Kander, a German Jew from Milwaukee.
Lizzie didn’t tell my Mom to sprinkle her chicken with dried thyme leaves, or rosemary leaves. Paprika, maybe…but not dried green herbs.
My Mom’s Mom didn’t tell her to sprinkle her chicken with herbs.
The culture didn’t tell her to sprinkle her chicken with herbs.
So guess what? She did not sprinkle her chicken with herbs…or her pot roast, or her beef stew, or her lamb chops, or her baked fish.
It was at my Dad’s apron strings that I learned so much about cooking Italian food, Chinese food, etc. But it was at my Mom’s apron strings that I learned about intrinsic flavor. Those chickens really tasted like…chicken!
Suddenly, however, a shift was in the air during her housewife career. In the 1960s, Julia was cooking on TV with…oar-ee-GAN-o! James Beard was herb-besotted. Good cooks like those two who’d spent time in Europe endeavored to show us how Europeans use herbs, to make our national cooking more sophisticated. Lesser cooks took to the concept because it was so much easier to make a flavorful anything if you sprinkled it with dried herbs (never mind that it often tasted like the herb, not like the thing under the herb). McCormick’s and Ehler’s were booming. Older cooks like my Mom were curious about all these herbs. Newer cooks absorbed the Herb Theory as if there were no other; I know people today who started cooking in the 1960s and 1970s, who, when roasting a chicken in 2012, won’t even think about anything other than shoving branches of rosemary into the chicken’s crevices, including the big one at the center.
I myself was herb-dependent for years; it was the height of cookin’ cool in the 1980s to have your chicken look like the back forty of an herb farm!
Somewhere along the line, though—perhaps it was the glorious step-up in the frequency of my travel to France, and Spain—I took away the opposite lesson. I learned that the food has to taste like the main ingredient…that herbs, unless used in the most appropriate ways, can seem intrusive.
My chicken-roasting, back at home, took a left turn. No more sprig party. Now I was looking at other things to make my chicken great: non-intrusive smears (like butter, goose fat); degrees of salt-and-pepper seasoning; roasting temperatures and times; positions of the bird in the pan; etc. My holy grail was a golden, uniformly crisp-skinned chicken…that tasted like chicken, not rosemary
You see my point: herbs, for American home cooks, became a kind of crutch…that prevented them from truly walking a chicken home to greatness. The herb thing became a distraction, a laziness; the home cook was saying, “Well, I DID my best…I put herbs on it, for goodness’ sake!”
The practice goes way beyond chicken, of course; you see this kind of thinking everywhere today in American home kitchens. And in some restaurants, too: many’s the time a dish is “sold” on the menu by its herb-inclusion (the “brined red partridge with an infusion of Hallertauer hops” kind of thing).
Now, I’m not sayin’ that all herbs are out of bounds. Far from it. Fresh herbs at the height of the season, usually when used in traditional ways, can lead to brilliant food, of course. Could I ever argue against pesto, made from small-leaf bush basil? Never! Could I ever rant against fronds of fresh dill falling lightly on my homemade chicken soup? Never!
Dried herbs, with their mustier, duller tastes, are more of a problem. But that doesn’t mean I’d banish them. No way! I love dried oregano on pizza, even sprinkled on at the last minute; I love dried tarragon in a French cream sauce.
In either case, and in every case, it’s a question of quantity; hit just the right, subtle amount, and you’re achieved something special.
But I’m going to insist, once again, that you let yourself be guided by tradition. I know, I know…some chef somewhere today (and I mean TODAY) will put hoja santa on an Australian mudbug for the very first time, and the world will change. Cool. New traditions should be born all the time. But let’s face it: it takes a thousand experiments before a new tradition starts to form. The rest of those experiments…say, 999 of them…are not going anywhere.
Am I tamping down your freedom? Sorry! Don’t mean to! Herb it up all you like! But I really think home cooking improves as we all learn more about what has worked for chefs over the last 200 years! And we start counting on things other than a small bottle or can from the supermarket to win the day!
Just to show you my love for herbs done right…here are some major traditional categories in which I adore, nay, require herbs:
GREEK FOOD. OMG. Dill rules. Just made some spanakopita the other night in which the dill ROCKED the spinach filling…such sympathetic flavors! Glad they discovered this about a million years ago! Throughout Greek cuisine, there is a very logical use of Mediterranean herbs…that makes the food taste Greek. No surprise…here’s a culture that has been herbing-up its wine for a few thousand years, in the form of pine (leading to the idiosyncratic wine Retsina, which I think is perfect with many Greek foods!)
ITALIAN FOOD. Duh! Neighboring Italy also loves its herbs, of course. Again, though, one must look to tradition. I do not want some herb-crazed chef creating for me a lobster risotto with rosemary!
MEXICAN/CARIBBEAN FOOD. And where would this be without cilantro? Yes, of course…I love cilantro in many of these dishes! In fact, cilantro almost gets a pass from me in this kind of cooking. My only caution would be: if you’re making a multi-course meal, don’t cilantro-ize everything!
THAI/VIETNAMESE FOOD. Wow. The conflation of several herbs at the same time in Thai salads, Vietnamese soups, and more, is an outstanding herb achievement in my mind. Pho…ain’t pho…without a small garden of mint leaves, holy basil leaves, and cilantro leaves going into it! THAT’s the taste of the dish!
LASTLY, THE FOODS THAT REQUIRE HERBAL CAUTION. I would not go herb-happy, however, around traditional Spanish cooking; it is not traditional in the cuisine, and I think it’s no time to change that now. French food also requires some herb caution; yes, the south uses more herbs, but please don’t herb up the brilliant central and northern cuisine. Do you want marjoram in your onion soup? Oregano on your choucroute??? And, I would humbly argue, that when we cook our good old American classics…we should resist the herby-inventy thing. Boston baked beans? Southern fried chicken? Steamed lobster? California patty melt? Meat loaf? Try ’em all herb-free, giving your attention instead to COOKING them just right…and see if your love for the intrinsic flavors surpasseth not your love for McCormick’s!
Image: Suzette – www.suzette.nu
