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By Vicki Blachman |
We are approaching the time of year when many of us have dog-eared seed catalogs indicating our dreams for the coming spring. Maybe it’s a new vegetable variety or a tried-and-true annual flower, but how many of you plant seeds each year in order to harvest more seeds?
Take a look at your spice bottles and consider the many culinary herbs known for the “spice” they produce. According to the National Herb Society, “herb” traditionally refers to aromatic leafy parts of the plant and “spice” to the edible, non-leafy parts such as bark, fruit, seed, rhizome, roots and flowers.
Some of your spices are from the plant’s bark (cinnamon), some from dried flower buds or stamens (cloves or saffron); but many more are what we consider the seed. Think of coriander, used extensively in baking and curry blends; caraway that creates the distinctive flavor of rye bread; or celery seed, essential to many coleslaw and Bloody Mary recipes. There’s nutmeg and its flavorful orange netting we call mace. Black pepper is a berry, but any botanist will quickly tell you that many things we call seeds are in fact the plant’s aromatic fruit. That spice rack of yours may also hold poppy, anise, fennel, mustard and dill seeds. The point is, culinary herbs aren’t simply cultivated for their flavorful leaves; seeds may even be the more desirable part of the plant.
Seeds also continue to be a rich source of some of our healthier cooking oils: avocado, grape seed, sunflower, rapeseed (commonly called Canola) and safflower. Avocado and grape seed oils have the added benefit of a high smoking point, making them ideal for higher heat cooking, such as stir-fries and grilling. You may not immediately identify them as such, but coconuts are considered the world’s largest seeds. Once reviled as a saturated vegetable fat, recent years have seen sales skyrocket as claims surrounding the health benefits of coconut products have made headlines.
The precise conditions required for growing many of these culinary treasures are found only in limited tropical locations. Backyard Texas gardens aren’t likely to produce black pepper, nutmeg or vegetable oils; but let’s explore what is possible with little effort beyond a small amount of planning.
Plants often slow or stop their growth as their resources turn to bloom and seed production, so common wisdom is that removing blooms will extend the life of the mother plant and encourage more branching and leafy growth. For most of my gardening years, I adhered to common wisdom and pinched back all the tender tips on herbs as soon as they gave any indication of a bloom. When it came to basil, I later learned from Madeline Hill to take the entire top two-thirds of the mature plant to achieve the same goal. Now I teach folks to leave at least some of those blooms to mature on the plant. Why? Two good reasons — seeds and beneficial pollinators.
These days my reasons for gardening have changed. In addition to growing culinary herbs, I try to create an enjoyable retreat for my family while providing a hospitable habitat for pollinators. Native bees are surprisingly good neighbors as they go about the business of collecting pollen and nectar and raising their young, and who doesn’t love seeing hummingbirds and butterflies? When planning nearly year-round blooms to welcome these visitors, I find flowering herbs play a significant role. Various basils, chives, marjoram, thyme, salvias, Mexican oregano, garlic, parsley, dill, fennel and borage, even roses and citrus, take their turns attracting and feeding a host of pollinators.
But what does this have to do with seeds? It really does circle back around. Rather than eliminating blooms to extend the availability of herb leaves from one plant, my annuals are sown in waves, or successive plantings; the perennials are planted in multiples. That allows at least one plant for blooming without interference, while I prune and enjoy the others to my heart’s content. Once the first planting of an annual has set seed, I stop pruning the next “wave” and allow it to bloom and set seed. For the perennials, pruning is done on one plant, then another. This rotation system always allows some blooms for the pollinators and still provides plenty of aromatic foliage and an early crop of seeds for me. Everybody wins!
The number of desirable seed-producers that are cool-season herbs may surprise you. True anise, caraway, cilantro (coriander), cumin, dill and fennel all belong to the plant family Umbelliferae (recently reclassified as the carrot family Apiaceae). These herbs may not thrive in all of our widely varied Texas winters, but nearly every region of Texas will find cilantro, dill and fennel easy to grow, providing several months of flavorful leaves before the plants go to seed. And what seeds they are! Glance back at the beginning of this paragraph and you’ll find seeds that are as widely used as their fresh-leaf versions.
When seed heads on any of the Umbelliferae begin to turn brown, you know they’re almost ready. Gardeners may enclose them in cheesecloth or muslin bags, allowing them to mature on the plant without shattering and scattering the seed. I prefer instead to monitor them daily and gather the seed heads when they turn golden brown with slightly darker, mature seed. They’re then stored in a paper bag and allowed to dry completely before use. Recently some chefs have begun using immature fennel seeds for a somewhat different take on its lemony, anise flavors; but herb seeds are generally dried thoroughly for better storage.
Another cool-weather grower that does well in Texas is the poppy, enjoying the cooler temps of late winter and early spring. An heirloom variety known as ‘Pepperbox’ produces attractive, intensely pink blooms with deep purple centers as well as tasty seeds in abundance. Allow the seed pods to mature on the plant until small holes open near the crown at the top, then carefully capture all the tiny seeds contained inside. They’re ready to use in baking immediately or to save for replanting next year. To replant, I take the lazy-gardener method. In late fall, the seeds are sprinkled liberally on bare soil. After overwintering, the seeds will sprout in spring, requiring little more attention than some thinning.
Proving once again she was ahead of her time, Madeline Hill was cooking with peppery seeds known as “grains of paradise” back in the 1970s at the original Hilltop Herb Farm. Top-tier chefs are “discovering” them again today. You won’t be able to grow grains of paradise (Aframomum melegueta), but you can find them in grocery stores such as Whole Foods and Central Market. The small brown seeds come to us from Africa and have a complex flavor that is reminiscent of cardamom, citrus and pepper. Although delicious anywhere you want a peppery finish, they really shine when featured in a simple dish like roasted chicken or sautéed asparagus. One of my favorites is fish fillets sautéed in a small amount of ghee or butter with nothing more than minced garlic chives, grains of paradise and kosher salt. Keep grains of paradise stored in a pepper grinder so they can be freshly ground just prior to use.
In a discussion of culinary seeds, you might not expect roses to come up. But in addition to bringing beauty and fragrance to our gardens, organically grown roses provide both edible petals and seeds. Herb aficionados have allowed their roses to form “hips” (a type of fleshy seed pod) for decorative, culinary and medicinal use for hundreds of years. Long before any scientific studies could test efficacy or demonstrate a high content of lycopene and Vitamin C, some American Indian tribes were using rose-hip preparations to treat infection. Typically the hip was made into a paste or brewed with hot water to form a drink. More recently during World War II, a call went out for English citizens to collect rose hips to treat children in hospitals. The German submarines off the coast had slowed shipping and trade, resulting in a shortage of citrus fruit and a need to find another source of the valuable dietary supplements they contain.
Some of the most interesting and flavorful uses of culinary seeds come to us from other countries. Eastern Europeans gave us delicious dark rye bread and dill pickles; Italians, the intriguing sweet flavor of fennel in sausage and sauces. Indian cuisine ranks high for its endless combinations of ground spices in blends that incorporate ajwain, cardamom, fenugreek, nigella, mustard and cumin, among other seeds. Fennel seed is also used there as a breath freshener and digestive aid. Chat masala, a spice blend found in the street food of India, incorporates ground, dried pomegranate seeds. In Thailand, basil seeds are soaked until they form a gel that is sweetened and used for desserts and sweet beverages. The Middle East provided us with the ground paste of sesame seeds known as tahini, essential to the preparation of hummus. And where would our morning bagel be without its sprinkling of seeds, whether poppy, sesame or both?
Speaking of our breakfast bagel, let us not forget that coffee beans are actually the paired seeds found inside coffee fruit (commonly called coffee cherries). While it’s not realistic for the Texas gardener to attempt to grow coffee, or for that matter many of the seeds mentioned here, it’s interesting to think of the creative and delicious ways humans have found to consume and enjoy seeds.
This year use those seed catalogs to dream about more than plants — think about producing more seeds. First check for local seed sources to get started; but if a local nursery doesn’t carry your favorites, there are a number of reliable sources available online. Explore what’s available through Baker Creek, Johnny’s Seeds, Renee’s Garden Seeds, Botanical Interests and Willhite Seed, among many others. Then allow your culinary imagination to run wild. But when harvesting, please remember to leave some blooms for our beneficial pollinators!
