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Into The Garden: Scottish lovage

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I had such a lovely reaction to the first Into The Garden a fortnight ago - thank you. As well as the comments here, many emails, some asking where and when to get the plant (I will add the occasional link going forward, but mostly just chatting about enjoying the window into the garden. So here’s another favourite. And I hope I can encourage you to comment here, not because I don’t enjoy the behind the curtain conversation, but because so much of what you have to say would be interesting to others as well as me.

If you saw that film a couple of weeks ago, you may like the first few seconds of the film above, as it shows the anise hyssop starting to flower.

Most of it is about lovage though. Lovage is quite a beast. You can hit it with a mallet, run over it in a tank, pour turps over it and set it alight, and still the little devil responds like a passenger airbag, filling all available space in no time; Scottish (sometime Scots, sometimes Scotch) lovage is altogether smaller, a little more succulent in texture, and equally delicious. If you have limited space or fancy a bit of something different, it’s the one for you. I sell them over at the nursery, if you feel so inclined, and so do others.

I won’t say much about the flavour as the film does that, but it has the depth of a woody herb in its soft leaves, so add it late and sparingly for a bold impression, or early to allow its punch to soften a touch. As good as the leaves are, it is the seeds of the Scottish lovage I love best. They turn from the green in the film to a rusty gold, swapping intense brightness for a deeper, earthier flavour: cast into proving dough, ground and dusted over excellent tomatoes, fried slowly with onions as the base of a soup, or tipped into a jar of lightly sweetened vodka they are extraordinary.

Scottish behaves similarly to its larger relative: it wakes up from winter into enthusiastic productivity, and you can pick leaves anytime from spring into autumn, and seeds for as long as they hang on to the plant. The young leaves are most tender and great raw; the oldest can be very bitter. The stems are hollow - like soft bamboo - and taste like the rest of the plant - and while you can cut them back to prevent flowering and encourage more leaves to grow, the flowers lead to the delicious seeds, so why would you. The only good answer I can think of is that the stems make an excellent straw for a Bloody Mary.

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Lovage vodka (from HERB/a cook’s companion)

I wouldn’t leave this to infuse for long, at least the first time you make it: within a couple of days it will be nicely pokey, with the sugar just settling it down a little; you might find that’s enough for you, or leave it months. Remove the leaves when it reaches the flavour you fancy.

Keep the leaves attached to the stem: there’s a pleasing touch of the reverse ship-in-a-bottle about retrieving them.

70cl vodka

150g caster sugar

20 leaves or so of lovage, still attached to the stem OR a nice handful of seeds

Half fill a jar or bottle with vodka and add the sugar using a funnel. Invert and generally agitate to start the sugar dissolving. Add the lovage leaves, top with vodka, and leave somewhere cool and dark to infuse. 

Thanks for reading and commenting - it’s great to be back writing online here.

Mark

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From The Garden To The Table
The transformation of my garden, growing the most delicious food, edible garden design, plant ideas, recipes, cocktails, fermentation and more
Authors
Mark Diacono