Snipping Herbs

Ann handed me a pair of kitchen shears and asked me to clip some chives, oregano, thyme, basil and rosemary for the soup.

Ann Clark was teaching her series, Fabulous Fish, and I was her assistant. I was back home after living in New York for a couple of years after college, waiting to start grad school at UT in the fall.  I’d been helping out at my mom’s store, Bon Appetit Cookware, off and on since high school and assisted in a lot of the cooking classes there. I’d assisted Ann (the primary teacher at Bon Appetit who had her own school, La Bonne Cuisine) before, but this was my first time to help out in this two-day intensive fish class. 

First up was making a light salad that we’d serve after the Fish Soup with Corn and Zucchini. Four heads of tender Bibb lettuce greens were piled on the counter next to the sink, waiting to be washed.  Ann handed me a giant stainless-steel bowl to use to clean them. 

I set a colander in the sink, filled the bowl with water and the salad greens, gave them a good swish, then hefted up the bowl and dumped all the contents -- water, greens, grit and all -- into the strainer below. Ann saw me do it, and shook her head gently, “No.” I instantly realized I had just dumped all the dirt mixed in with the water right back on top of the washed greens.

“Do it this way,” she said, refilling the bowl with clear water, then putting the greens back in, swishing them around a bit, and gently lifting them out with her hands, and placing them in the colander.  “Next,” she said, “dump out the old water in the bowl, replace it with fresh, then put the greens back in, swish them around again and repeat until there isn’t any dirt or sand left behind in the bowl. You’ll probably need to do it two or three times to get the dirt out of all the folds in the lettuce.”

So obvious to me now — but we learn!

Next, Ann asked me to clip some fresh herbs for the soup. The garden was in a little wild area out back, jammed with plants and flowers. Right away, I spotted the chives, basil and rosemary, but didn’t know what thyme or oregano looked like in their natural state. In 1987, fresh herbs were still not the norm; we relied mainly on dried herbs from the pantry stored in clear glass Spice Islands jars, or small, squat plastic tubs of McCormick’s from the local grocery store. 

I bent down to smell the herbs. A low-growing plant, with soft, cascading sprigs of tender round leaves, smelled of pasta sauce and made me think of Italy. “Oregano,” I guessed. A small, tightly-bound bush of spiny stalks studded with tough, tiny leaves reminded me of French foods: Coq Au Vin and French Onion Soup.  “Thyme” I thought, and clipped a clump of strands. 

Stepping back inside, I handed the fistfuls of herbs to Ann. She smiled her thanks, and turned to teach the class about the herbs we were using in the soup. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d gotten it right this time.