Herb Garden Happiness

If you want to add some instant feel-good and taste-good factor to your cooking, get some fresh herbs growing close to where you cook. If you don't have outdoor space, pots of supermarket herbs on your counter will do the job. But if you've got a bit of space outside, near the back door and preferably near the barbeque, treat yourself to home-grown herbs for salads, smoking under meat, stuffing things, flavouring cooking liquids. Also perfect for absent minded nibbling, or crushing in your hand and smelling deeply.

There is an awful lot of concrete in the five course garden, and I wouldn't have dreamed of adding more, but I really wanted a herb plot right outside the kitchen door beside the barbeque, where there was no soil. Then I saw the concrete block container garden on TV.  Photos and instructions for the "build" here.

Here's the kitchen herb garden in early spring, with some established long-term residents, some squatters and some new immigrants.

Chives for salad and salad dressings, mint for boiled potatoes, oregano and thyme for roast chichen, lemon grass just because it survived the winter in a pot and needed a new home. Some strawberries moved in over the winter, and we've decided not to deport them for now. There are chervil seeds in there too, about to germinate any minute. Off to the side is a pot of echinacea which will eventually spring up and burst open like mini fireworks, and in the round pot, a clump of humble but irresistible crimson daisies.

Some must-have herbs for the kitchen

Rosemary
Easy to grow, hard to kill, not fussy about the cold, occasionally covered with lovely blue or white flowers, and leaves packed full of reviving oils.

• Fantastic to rub in your hands and sniff deeply for an instant perk-me-up.
• Amazing roasted with potatoes and lemons. 
• Stuffed inside chicken while it's roasting. 
• Under lamb chops on the barbeque. Yes it will burn and smoke. Awesome flavouring.

Parsley

• A little-known fact about parsley is that it's a sedative for dogs. Or maybe it just makes a good pillow.
• Parsley is a bit like lipstick. Any dish that's looking slightly bland gets an instant perk up with a quick lick of parsley. It also makes a striking colour statement against the red of tomato sauce and the orange of carrots and pumpkin. 
• And its greener than greenness is packed with herby nourishment. Put it on everything -- but probably not cakes or puddings.

Tarragon
This is the French, aniseed flavoured tarragon that I'm guilty of stroking, nibbling, sniffing... and not yet cooking with. This year I will make my own tarragon vinegar, and have a go at some classic French dishes that call for big bunches of the stuff. I just love that it grows here, surviving the winter under the protection of the giant sorrel, and shyly emerging in spring, sending out new roots and aniseedy shoots.

Photo from last summer. The 2012 basil leaves are still smaller than pin heads.

Basil
For all its reluctance to germinate, and its endless need for water, sunshine, warmth, and bug protection, Basil is well worth growing, just for the pure pleasure of its clovey sweet smell, and that surprise mouthful of heat and spice when you strike a whole leaf in your lettuce salad -- it tastes a bit like those little spicy pink lollies called smokers. Does anyone else remember them?

• Pesto. I use the same recipe for basil pesto as for sorrel pesto. Completely different seasons, completely different flavours; same joy.
• Fresh basil in a salad for a bit of mouth fun.
• Wrap a freshly plucked basil leaf around a freshly plucked cherry tomato and eat whole... preferably while you're standing outside early one warm summer morning, wielding the watering can.
• You can't beat a slice of cool mozzarella on a basil leaf. Even without the slice of tomato it's amazing. 

Thyme
Humble old thyme grows everywhere, never complains about the weather, never gets bugs, and tastes so much better fresh than dried and dusty. We love our thyme bushes. We really only use thyme for two dishes, but they are house classics that appear on our menu most weeks.

• A handful of leafy stems stuffed inside roast chicken with a few cloves of garlic and half a lemon = wow.
• The tiny leaves sprinkled with salt and pepper over potatoes, for the best ever oven baked frites.

I could list so many more. But these are my top five use-all-the-time fresh herbs. They will all grow in containers, but parsley and rosemary are more voluptuous grown in the ground.

There's nothing quite like being able to nip out the back door mid dinner-making and pick fresh herbs for a dish. And I think that's what the herbs thrive on too. The ones I'm constantly picking and crushing are the ones that flourish. Codependent? And proud of it!