from: Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book
About Sorrel Jane Grigson writes:
"I learnt the advantages of sorrel in France, where every garden however small -- or at least every garden in Touraine and Anjou -- has a patch of [sorrel] as close to the kitchen door as possible. We visit a friend in the early evening... Suddenly ... she remembers food and rushes to the nearest corner of the vegetable patch to grab a couple of handfuls of sorrel. In a quarter of an hour we are eating a lively soup, fresh and agreeably sharp, that she has made with the minimum of trouble.
In France everyone, it seems, knows about sorrel, and the homely standby of quick sorrel soup... Sorrel soup, sorrel omelette, sorrel sauce with fish or eggs mollet, turn a frugal meal into something special. People wonder if it's spinach with lemon juice? No...
Sorrel comes half-way between vegetables and flavouring. A few chopped leaves can be added to a green salad for zest. A larger quantity can be cooked down to fill omelettes, like spinach, or to make soups and sauces. The best-known of French sorrel soups is made purely of sorrel and water, with an enriching finale of egg yolks and cream."
About cooking garden "things":
"Most people spoil garden things by over boiling them. All things that are green should have a little crispness, for if they are overboil'd they neither have any sweetness or beauty."
~ Hannah Glasse
submitted by Patti Andrews
No comments:
Post a Comment