Herbal Essence

If you have a windowsill, you can have a produce garden. If you have a balcony or a backyard, there's no excuse not to. Just do it. Plant an herb garden. Plant it now.

It might be too late to plant from seeds, but it's not too late to plant seedlings. This pot of basil, as it happens, is a mixture: new seedlings from the Union Square Greenmarket; old, nearly dead little plants I bought last season from the Greenmarket; and plants that I raised from a bag of basil seeds. But never mind the basil's origins; think instead about the convenience of having such a bumper crop. Basil for sauce, salads and garnish on demand, minus the hassle of shopping. Even better, you take only what you need from the plant, so you're spared the guilt pangs of watching the leftover half of a too-big bunch turn to slime in the fridge.

I'm growing dill, too. The dill is a bit less prolific, so I've been using it for garnishes or tiny bursts of flavor. I still need to buy dill when I want to make pickles or cucumber salad. Still, the dill justifies its keep with its lovely, lacy yellow seed head, a fireworks version of Queen Anne's Lace. 

I'm getting full mileage from the cilantro, oregano and chives below. I particularly love the earthy oregano, especially with luscious summer tomatoes. I've also just planted parsley and mint, two other workhorses.

I find a few yanks of fresh herbs add incalculable flavor - and class! - to salads and other dishes. 

I'll be thinking about this simple chopped salad in the winter doldrums.

I grow my herbs for their flavor punch, but they are also part of the world of alternative medicine. I was dimly aware that many favorite herbs are nutritional powerhouses but hadn't pondered why. As the food journalist Jo Robinson observed in her important essay, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food," herbs are powerful because they - unlike many popular fruits and vegetables - have largely been ignored by the formal and informal breeding programs that try to make our produce sweeter and hardier, and consequently their nutritional composition has largely stayed intact. 

As she writes, 

Herbs are wild plants incognito. We’ve long valued them for their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they’ve not been given a flavor makeover. Because we’ve left them well enough alone, their phytonutrient content has remained intact...Herbs bring back missing phytonutrients and a touch of wild flavor as well.

So capture that wildness - at least just enough to fit enough in a small pot or two, in the smiling face of the sun.

The Cult of the Sour Cherry

They're elusive. They're delicate. Their growing season is short. They make a brief appearance in select markets - I counted only a few sightings at the Union Square Greenmarket - and none at all at most gourmet stores. Consequently, their fans, an "almost cultlike following," in the words of the New York Times, have been known to head to farms to pick their own. My sister planned her her backyard garden with them in mind, and has reorganized and replanted repeatedly, hoping for some success.

Just what is about sour cherries that warrants such devotion?

"They are perfect," my sister said when I posed this question to her."Their shape and size are very pleasing. Their flavor is perfectly sweet and sour. Their texture is nice and light, not as dense as sweet cherries, although I like sweet cherries too. If only they weren't so hard to come by."

Sadly, my sister's sour cherry tree looks more like her fig tree than this lush beauty.

So it's off to the market.

For those who blinked and missed the Greenmarket's crop of sour cherries, a pilgrimage must be made to Brighton Beach. Forget hipster Brooklyn enclaves like Gowanus  and Red Hook that are making the "Brooklyn" brand an international shorthand for coolness. For produce lovers, this Russian area is Brooklyn's best neighborhood. This rule applies doubly for enthusiasts of produce that is popular with Eastern Europeans.

In case you're wondering if sour cherries fall into this category, take a look at this UN Food and Agricultural Organization chart (courtesy of Wikipedia) or a rival chart about sour cherry production embedded in this Power Point presentation.

Rank	Country	Sour cherry production in Metric Tonnes
1	Russia	235,000
2	Ukraine	178,000
3	Turkey	140,000
4	Poland	138,000
5	Serbia	116,000
6	USA	98,000
7	Hungary	82,000
8	Germany	80,000
9	Iran	51,000
10	Georgia	15,000
11	Moldova	15,000
12	Belarus	15,000
13	Denmark	14,000
14	Albania	8,200
15	Croatia	7,500

(For those Russians who can't cope with sour cherries' short season, there's always компот (compote). 

Sour cherries fall into two categories: the dark red morello, which have red flesh, and rosy red amarelle, which have pale flesh. (Compare the picture at the top of this blog post with the picture below.)  Montmorency cherries, an amarelle variety, are the most widely sold in the US.  

But how do sour cherries stack up against  "regular" Bing cherries? I bought some of each to find out.

As you can see from the pictures, sour cherries (on the left) are smaller and rounder and a little lighter in color. Their flesh is less dense than the Bing cherries' and their taste is - no surprise here - tangy and and a bit pucker-worthy, less uncomplicatedly sweet than the Bings' taste. Both kinds of cherries were very pleasing. In the interest of being thorough in my research, I ate all of both kinds.

Sour cherries have a different nutritional profile than sweet cherries. They have a little less sugar and fewer calories. Their tart taste is also associated with their high concentration of antioxidants. 

According to researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, sour cherries have "the highest anti-inflammatory content of any food." A roundup of the health benefits of sour cherries by the National College of Natural Medicine is impressive: tumor reduction in parts of the gut; improved quality and duration of sleep (because of sour cherries' melatonin; decreased post-exercise muscle soreness and inflammation; and greater strength following exercise. Choose Cherries, the website of a trade group that promotes sour cherries, lists studies that link sour cherries to reduced risk of heart disease; reduced risk of stroke; reductions in the inflammation associated with arthritis and gout; and reductions in blood cholesterol and triglycerides. The American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry suggested that sour cherries might be helpful in lowering diabetic people's blood sugar levels and increasing insulin production, prompting the author of its announcement to write, "Perhaps George Washington wouldn't have chopped down his father's cherry tree if he knew what chemists now know."  

Of course, before there were chemists analyzing sour cherries' health benefits, there were chefs creating sour cherry delicacies: sour cherry soup (fondly recalled as a summertime treat by my Viennese neighbor Rose), kriek lambic beer, Persian sour cherry-saffron rice, Turkish nectars and syrups, and my husband's favorite dessert, cherry strudel. (He, like other Upper East Siders of a certain vintage, still mourns the loss of the great Mrs. Herbst but gains comfort in the existence of Andre's Cafe and European Bakery.)

And you needn't be from Eastern Europe or Western Asia to appreciate the culinary possibilities: the US has its own ode to sour cherries: cherry pie.

But when you're torn between fried cherry pie pockets and medicinal "superfood" tart cherry powder - a divide that nicely epitomizes our oftentimes crazy approach to food in this country - remember, there's a lovely fruit in there. 

And you don't have to be a cultist to enjoy it.