Friday, March 2, 2007

Coriander seeds

Well I said I'd say something more about our coriander seeds used in the last recipe, so here it is:
I planted cilantro in the herb garden last year, but something came along one night and ate it right down to the ground. I'm guessing that it was probably slugs. Luckily, some cilantro had seeded itself in the vegetable garden from the year's before crop. Actually a lot of cilantro had seeded itself. It was between tomatoes, beside the kale, behind the peppers. It was pretty much everywhere. By the time I noticed it had already grown to a healthy size.
We went away for three weeks last summer to the Maritimes, during the hottest time of the summer. When we got back a lot of plants had flowered and were starting to go to seed, including the cilantro. I guess this is the point we start to call it coriander since that refers to the seeds. Instead of pulling the plants out, I decided to let the coriander keep maturing. After a few weeks there were many bunches of beautiful green seeds on all the plants. At this mature stage, you can really see that cilantro, parsley and carrots are plants in the same family because the leaves, flowers and seeds are all similarly shaped.
When they were ready I put paper bags over the top of all the plants with rubber-bands around the base so that I could cut the plants without loosing any of the seeds. I dried the plants on newspaper for a week then hand-picked them off the twigs. It a truly intoxicating job. The fragrance of coriander was all over my skin. Every few minutes I would bring my hands up to my nose to get a deep breath of it and I would swoon from the hypnotic perfume. I sealed them in glass jar and planned an Indian meal to try them out.
Rick and I were blown away by the taste of these fresh seeds .Only a couple seeds were needed to give a strong coriander flavour to potatoes. It really goes to show that spices you buy at the store are pretty old and spent. Sadly, we're down to our last dozen or so seeds. We're been rationing them to be used in only really special meals. I can't wait to grow more this year.