Question
Rosie AIELLO
Can you go through your process of using fresh herbs--the order of washing, how to dry, chop? Are there some herbs that should be torn instead of chopped?
Do you maintain an herb garden? Indoors/outdoors?
Answer
Well, Rosie, uh, in the summertime and now it's after Mother's Day and I'm in Philadelphia. It is time for my herb garden. Um, my herbs did not make it through the winter. I, it's my greatest joy to go out to my small terrace and pick rosemary, thyme, basil. My basil did really well this year. My thyme did. Um, I've given up on cilantro. It doesn't seem to like heat or my terrace or my, I don't know my view 'cause I don't do that. I do have very sunny terrace windows, so I keep some rosemary plants there and there's nothing like it. It just gives me such a thrill. Um, but I wouldn't say I have an indoor herb garden in my apartment. What I do is if I'm coming home from the farmer's market or the grocery store and I have bun bought a bunch of fresh herbs and I want to preserve them as long as I can, if any have been packaged in plastic, I take that plastic right out. I look for any bruised leaves and get rid of that right away. Get rid of that because the same thing with the berry, you wanna get rid of any spoiled bits. And then I wash the herbs separate one from another very gently, uh, under a spray of water or more often in, uh, a salad spinner. And then I have, I wanna show you, So I have loads of these towels. Some are for drying my dishes, the red ones and the blue ones are for storing herbs and other vegetable sally greens. So I pat them dry and then I keep them in. If the towel is very wet, I'll use another one. I put this inside another bag in my refrigerator. Herbs like parsley and cilantro and some other herbs like that. I keep them the way I keep flowers. I put them the stems into a jar of water. And sometimes, and if I'm going to be using them quickly, I keep that out on my counter. It's never really hot in my home. Or I'll put them in the refrigerator sometime with a, I call it a shower cap, but a plastic bag over them. And then that's what I do with the herbs. Um, in terms of chopping or tearing them. Sometimes I tear basil, but, uh, you wanna strip them off the stems before you chop. So I have this, I tend to do it myself instead of using this and then make a little ball, let's say with the parsley or with, um, basil or mint, you can roll the leaves up and ship an a them. And that's, that's what I do. You don't wanna press really hard and you wanna make sure that your knife is really sharp so that the leaves don't get bruised.
