The 'Thyme' Of My Life
I love herbs of all kinds, but my favorite is thyme, followed by sage and rosemary. If you aren't much of a gardener, or if you live in a situation where you don't have access to a little plot of soil to plant your own herbs, it has been fairly easy to find fresh herbs for a number of years now, as supermarkets carry them in the produce section in small plastic containers. Of course, dried herbs are good too. For some good recipes using all sorts of herbs, fresh and dried, check out: "Fresh Herb Cooking" by Linda Dannenberg, with photographs by Ellen Silverman, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang, New York, 2001. Whether the book is still for sale, I have no idea, but it may be available from your local library.
This is my own recipe for herb butter, developed after trying various recipes over the years. It's great on chicken or beef, or just on some good bread.
2 sticks of softened butter, preferably unsalted, but the world won't stop turning if you use salted butter, but with unsalted, you can control how much salt you then want to add
3 tablespoons of fresh thyme, finely chopped
3 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 teaspoon of salt, if you use unsalted butter, but if you use salted butter, I wouldn't add anymore salt
You simply mix all of the ingredients together, cover the dish and let it sit out for about a half hour, then refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably a couple of hours, to allow the butter to firm up and absorb the flavors. Then, as the great Julia Child used to say, "Bony Aperteef," or whatever the hell she used to say.
Herb butter on a half roll, along side liverwurst on a half roll, some blue cheese stuffed olives (larger) and some anchovy stuffed olives and tomatoes.
WORD HISTORY:
Thyme-This common herbal plant name, distantly related to the word "fume," goes back to the Indo European root "dhu," which had the notion of "to cause a cloud of smoke, dust, vapor." This gave its Greek offspring "thuein," meaning "burn, burn as an offering." This produced Greek "thumon" for the plant name, as the Greeks burned it as incense. Latin borrowed the word from Greek as "thymum," and this gave Old French, a Latin based language, "thym." English then borrowed the word in the late 1300s.
This is my own recipe for herb butter, developed after trying various recipes over the years. It's great on chicken or beef, or just on some good bread.
2 sticks of softened butter, preferably unsalted, but the world won't stop turning if you use salted butter, but with unsalted, you can control how much salt you then want to add
3 tablespoons of fresh thyme, finely chopped
3 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 teaspoon of salt, if you use unsalted butter, but if you use salted butter, I wouldn't add anymore salt
You simply mix all of the ingredients together, cover the dish and let it sit out for about a half hour, then refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably a couple of hours, to allow the butter to firm up and absorb the flavors. Then, as the great Julia Child used to say, "Bony Aperteef," or whatever the hell she used to say.
Herb butter on a half roll, along side liverwurst on a half roll, some blue cheese stuffed olives (larger) and some anchovy stuffed olives and tomatoes.
Thyme-This common herbal plant name, distantly related to the word "fume," goes back to the Indo European root "dhu," which had the notion of "to cause a cloud of smoke, dust, vapor." This gave its Greek offspring "thuein," meaning "burn, burn as an offering." This produced Greek "thumon" for the plant name, as the Greeks burned it as incense. Latin borrowed the word from Greek as "thymum," and this gave Old French, a Latin based language, "thym." English then borrowed the word in the late 1300s.
Labels: English, etymology, French, Greek, herb butter, herbs, Latin, recipes, rosemary, thyme
posted by Randy at 10:44 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home