![]() Frozen cough mixture is as close as I am right now. I have a fancy for a lemon thyme sorbet, but have yet to get it right. The idea of slipping them into my lemon cake recipe came after a successful attempt to include them in a classic shortbread. The lemon notes work with pork (crumbled on a chop included in the stuffing for a rolled garlicky loin), and I tuck them into a marinade for cubes of hake (olive oil, a bay leaf, peppercorns, no garlic) destined for the grill. Most used in my kitchen is the lemon thyme that has survived for four years in pots outside the back door despite having thinner stems and more tender leaves that the usual broad-leaved Thymus vulgaris. Look at the plant catalogues, go to the herb farms for a day out and inhale the extended family that brings creeping varieties among the flagstones, scarlet-flowered for attracting the bees and variegated leaves to add lightness to the darker greens of the herb patch. In the depths of winter the tough, woody stalks and their oval leaves bring a shaft of sunlight into our cooking.īut there is more than just the common thyme. Once those ingredients hit the bars of the grill the garden will smell as old as time, almost biblical. The one that celebrates in the company of olive oil and squashed garlic cloves as a basting liquor for lamb that will be roasted or grilled. The sharp edges of the salt break the surface of the leaves then soak up the resinous oils. Drop a few whole black peppercorns in there, too. A pestle and mortar is perfect for pounding the tough leaves with coarse sea salt. I have taken to crushing my leaves of thyme with salt and a heavy weight. Thyme just gets better, stronger and more pungent as the season progresses. The hotter the weather, the more the essential oils have to offer. Thyme is the holiday herb, the flavour of lunches eaten barefoot on baked earth of red meat on the grill and tingling, salt-encrusted lips. These are the tufts of leaves I tuck inside the cavity of a roasting chicken or guineafowl and scatter over the surface of roasted peppers and tomatoes for a high summer lunch. This is the herb I leave to simmer in the deep gravy of a lamb stew with its lifelong mate rosemary and wide strips of orange peel. It is easy to forget that thyme grows wild on our Cornish coastline just as it does on that of Greece or Provence.Īnyone who leafs through my recipes will see that thyme is a favourite pot herb – it adds deep notes of summer warmth and a faint but pleasing bitterness. ![]() I hadn't noticed the leaves or even the purple flowers as I trudged up the path that winds its way through the undulating Towans, but only when I sat to take a breath and stare out at the Atlantic with its silvery heat haze. And then there is the taste: aromatic, medicinal, with evocations of charcoal grills. ![]() T here is the smell: parched ground, sea breeze, warm and resinous.
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