Stand anywhere outside in May and you can almost hear green shoots growing. Leaves are unfolding and the early flowers bursting from their buds. Trees and hedgerows are suddenly green again and gardens come to life. No wonder May was always the 'merry month', praised for both its beauty and for new leaves to relieve the monotony of winter diets.

Today our diets no longer rely on our own skills of gathering and planting, nor even on the vegetables, fruits and herbs that our own country can produce. Throughout the year, vegetables and herbs are jetted in from the four corners of the world and it is easy to lose that precious sense of the seasons.

There is one way of keeping in touch, however, and that is to grow something of your own. Vegetables are rewarding, but you may not have the space. If you have a small garden bed or even a few tubs on a patio, there is nothing like growing your own herbs. Now is the time to take a trip out to a country herb garden to buy your plants. If you have never grown herbs before, stick with the familiar and easy to grow, and gradually increase your stocks over the years. Enjoy them for the mere pleasure of growing them, for their scents, their culinary properties and, when you learn more about them, for their gentle healing properties. The more familiar they become, the more you will love them and they will be a part of your life forever.

This time next year, you will share with all herb growers, the delight in picking the first new green leaves of early summer. Herbs such as thyme, sage, marjoram and rosemary will produce usable leaves throughout the winter, but in May will come the the more delicate leaves that show us that summer is really on its way. Enjoy them while you can and use them in as many different ways as possible.

CHIVES

Chives have both the smell and taste of bothe the onion and the leeke, as it were in participating of both. John Gerard, 1597

Chives have been called the 'little brothers of the onion' and that, in effect, is what they are. They are the first of the new green leaves to show themselves above the surface and sometimes appear even through late snows in March. They have a delicate, onion-like scent and, in May, sport pom-pom like flowers which are also edible. Chives were first grown and used by the ancient Chinese. They were brought to Britain by the Romans and can be found growing wild as well as in gardens.

Sprinkle chives into salads or over soups, add them to savoury butters, to cream or cottage cheese or to soured cream or yoghurt to make dips and sauces. Scatter them into salads of early lettuces and use the flowers, which have a similar flavour, as an edible garnish.

FENNEL

Above the lower plants it towers,
The fennel with its yellow flowers.
Longfellow

In May, the fennel has not yet begun to 'tower'. Its first feathery leaves appear near the ground to give a bushy appearance. As more leaves grow, the stems will push steadily upwards to make the plants tall and leggy.

There are two types of culinary fennel, common fennel,, which has bright green leaves, and bronze fennel which has leaves with a bronze coloured tinge. Both have the same, fresh aniseed-like scent and flavour and both produce an abundance of leaves and also harvestable seeds which will provide the flavour of fennel all through the winter.

Fennel has a centuries old reputation for being an excellent fish herb, partly because of the flavour and partly because it is said to be an ideal foil for the richness of oily fish. Sprinkle the chopped leaves over grilled or fried fish, add sprigs to baked fish or to a court bouillon for poaching. Add the leaves to sauces and dressings which are to be served with fish or chicken. Try them also in a pork casserole. Green salads, savoury butters, pickles and vinegars all benefit from the addition of fennel leaves.

Roman bakers used to place sprigs of fennel under loaves as they baked to give them a gentle aromatic flavour. In Medieval Europe, fennel was valued by the poor who chewed it on fast days to allay hunger pangs.

CHERVIL

...take three or four Handfuls of Chervil, picked clean.
From an eighteenth century recipe.

Chervil is one of those herbs that readily seeds itself. Once you have it, you will rarely lose it, although it may seed itself in unexpected places. It grows thickly in May, gets leggy and unuseable by mid-June, but then has another rush of growth in September. It has delicate, fine cut leaves with a flavour that is rather like parsley with a hint of aniseed.

Chervil goes exceptionally well with chicken and, with parsley, chives and tarragon, makes up the herb mixture known as 'fines herbes' which makes a superb addition to baked eggs and omelets. It is also excellent with vegetables, particularly carrots and new potatoes, and a sprig can be used to flavour milk for sweet puddings and custards. Commercially, it is used for flavouring liqueurs.

Chervil is one of the many herbs that came to Britain with the Romans. It soon escaped into the wild and even now can be found growing by hedges and along country lanes. It has never been a great favourite in British kitchens, but has been greatly enjoyed in Europe, especially in Holland where, in the seventeenth century, it was used to flavour a type of stew known as 'loblolly'.


SWEET CICELY

The leaves of sweet Cicely are exceeding good, wholesome and pleasant among other salad herbs.
John Gerard, 1597

Sweet cicely has a sweet spicy flavour. It grows bushy and tall and has large, lacy, slightly furry leaves, pretty umbels of white flowers and stalks flecked with red. Large, brown, pointed seeds follow the flowers in July.

Sweet cicely was confusingly named 'sweet chervil' by old herbalists and its country names include British Myrrh, Sweet Bracken and Shepherd¹s Needle, referring to the shape of the seeds. All parts of the plant have been used over the centuries for its sweet flavour and its aromatic and medicinal properties.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sweet cicely was primarily a salad herb. Its sweet, spicy flavour complements bitter tasting salad ingredients, such as green peppers and some types of lettuce. It can also be added to cooked cabbage and root vegetables and is an interesting addition to chicken and fish dishes.

The main use, for the leaves, however, is in sweet dishes, where it not only gives a delightful flavour but also helps to reduce the acidity of certain fruits. Add a sprig to fruit when cooking or use a sprig to flavour a syrup for a fruit salad. Fold the chopped leaves into whipped cream for a fruit topping or add them to the batter for sweet pancakes.

The roots were once candied or boiled and served with butter as a vegetable Grated raw root was added to salads.

Words partly written specially for About Food, partly taken from A Book of Herbs and Spices by Gail Duff, Guild Publishing, 1987. Recipes from A Book of Herbs and Spices and Cooking with Herbs, Green Tree Books, 1989