From Jeff Cox

In the early spring in southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and western Asia, the air is cool, the ground moist with winter rains and snowmelt, and in dappled shady copses, the native chervil appears, looking like a delicate form of parsley.

Now it’s widely grown around the world, but few in North America know it or use it in their cooking. Those who have discovered it know that it is one of the culinary joys of spring. When it’s young, its delicate green leaves are sweet and aromatic, and carry a scent and flavor of anise with a touch of parsley. Within a couple of months, the weather turns hot and it flowers and goes to seed. Then its leaves turn a greenish purple or yellow and its flavor is lost.

For millennia, Europeans have broken the long winter dependence on stored root vegetables, dried fruits, and meats by making a refreshing spring tonic salad out of the new leaves of chervil, dandelion, and watercress. Their vitality-restoring vitamins and minerals, and the taste of breath-cleansing anise and chlorophyll, were signs that summer was on its way—and so chervil became associated with Easter rituals.

Nowadays it’s a quintessential herb for French cooking. But it must be used fresh and raw. Drying it destroys its sweet anise character, as does the heat of cooking. It’s best added after the cooking is completed.

It has myriad uses: in salad dressings, as a component of sauce bearnaise, in omelets, as chervil butter (three tablespoons of finely chopped chervil worked into two sticks of room temperature butter, then spread over hot baked fish, or spread on toast or biscuits), or sprinkled liberally on springtime’s wonderful fava beans. It enhances light meats like chicken and veal. It goes with peas and carrots, as an adjunct to potatoes, and as an ingredient in salads.

Because chervil is a spring herb, it has a natural affinity for other spring vegetables, such as asparagus, baby carrots, and salads of new spring greens. Because it’s a hardy annual, it can be planted in late summer or early fall and overwinter for new growth early in the spring, or planted in early spring for harvesting until summer’s hot weather shuts it down.

Organic Sauce Bearnaise Recipe

You must make sauce bearnaise just as carefully as you do a hollandaise sauce, for overheating the egg yolks will cause them to cook, and adding too much butter will cause them to curdle. I’ve used the following recipe many times with success. Use it on grilled or baked fish and chicken.

¼ cup white wine vinegar
¼ cup dry white wine
1 Tbl. minced shallots
Pinch of salt
1/8 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
3 organic egg yolks
2 Tbl. cold organic butter
½ cup melted butter
3 Tbl. minced chervil

1. Boil the vinegar, wine, shallots, and salt and pepper over medium heat until the liquid reduces to two tablespoons. Let it cool, then strain to recover just the liquid.

2. Whisk the egg yolks until thick and creamy. Add the two tablespoons of vinegar and wine liquid. Place this mixture in the top of a double boiler, keeping the heat low as the water in the bottom of the double boiler simmers, and whisk until the mixture thickens. Add a tablespoon of the cold butter, and whisk it in until it’s melted and incorporated. Beat in the other tablespoon of cold butter until it melts and is incorporated. The cold butter prevents the egg yolks from overheating and cooking.

3. Gently melt the half-cup of butter and add it to the yolk mixture a quarter teaspoon at a time, making sure each addition is incorporated before the next addition. Keep the heat moderated. When the butter is all incorporated and the Bearnaise sauce is light and fluffy, add the chervil and whisk it in. Makes 1 ½ cups.
~~
Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and The Organic Food Shopper’s Guide and lives in Sonoma County, California.
OrganicToBe.org OrganicToGo.com
Jeff’s Posts
[Permanent Link] [Top]