I collect cookbooks and love to experiment with interesting meals from other culture like a Mexican mole. How about you? You can try your hand at cultivating a scrumptous themed kitchen herb garden.
You can cultivate the major herb plants in your own garden and have the freshest ingredients to add to your recipes, or experiment on your own.
You don’t have to have a special location for your themed kitchen herb garden. You can grow them in containers or in your usual garden bed.
Look no further than these recommendations for your own themed kitchen herb garden:
- Asian: There are so many different cultures and people in Asia, including Thai, Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese, so how could the food be dull? Some awesome herb plants to grow in your Asian-themed garden are lemongrass, cayenne pepper, cardamom and anise. Try the licorice flavor of anise in your next Indian meal, or try its warm sweetness in your baked goods. You can also try it in tea and in baking a savory-sweet cookie. The growing popularity of Asian cooking has helped it fall back into favor in the US in the last few years.
- Mexican: Not a week goes by when I don’t chow down on a Mexican meal. Some spicy beans and rice or nachos can quickly hit the location. The best Mexican recipes usually include these: Cayenne pepper, Cilantro and Garlic.
- Italian: Just about everybody I know has their favorite Italian dish. Mine is lasagna, of course. The best I ever had was my mom’s which included all these wonderful herb plants: basil, fennel, parsley, garlic, marjoram, oregano, rosemary and thyme. The oniony flavor of garlic makes it a perfect addition to most Italian dinners. Put a little of it on your roasted chicken and add it to your soups and stews. You can even toss some chopped garlic in your mashed potatoes. Be warned, the longer you cook garlic, the milder the flavor becomes so don’t overcook it!
- Middle East: Foods from the Middle East and north Africa are only growing in popularity lately. The tastes are so varied and the recipe items are so out of the norm for most of what I usually have in my recipes, such as chick peas, figs and couscous. These herbs are often to be found on the ingredient lists for Middle Eastern meals: cardamom, garlic, parsley, rosemary and saffron.
- German: You can have your own Oktoberfest any time you like if you have got all the right German herbs. These are a few of my favorite and most often used in authentic German dinners: chives, dill, horseradish, sage and thyme. Horseradish, which is related to mustard, is a wonderful condiment, opening the sinuses while adding tang to the taste buds. Use it to add some extra twang to beef, fish, cream cheese spreads, potato salad, mayonnaise and meat loaf.
One of the wonderful things about herb gardening it that herb plants are like a gift that keeps on giving. Once you cut off some lemongrass for your pad Thai, it will grow back. Most herbs benefit from being cut back from time to time and will likely grow bigger and fuller as a result.
Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.
Here is more information on Fresh Herb Gardening. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.
