From the

April-May 2001

Herbs: Burnet, Comfrey and Borage by Selma Miriam

Why not grow some cucumber flavored herbs? At our restaurant we make good use of them.

My favorite is salad burnet (Poterium Sanguisorba). It is a short-lived perennial, easily grown from seed. It is planted at the edge of the herb garden, where the rosettes of 12 to 15 inch-high leaves are attractive until they try to bloom. I cut off all bloom spikes since the flowers on their leggy the flowers stalks have no aesthetic value. But the leaves! They have a great cucumber flavor. We use burnet in herbal mayonnaise (with garlic leaves* and thyme) and in herb omelets. The best herbal butter is made with chopped burnet, garlic leaves, a little feathery fennel and a very small sage leaf. Chopped together and mashed into the butter, this mixture is delicious, especially on freshly made rye bread.

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) is an aggressive perennial, growing in sun or shade. Plants grow to three feet or taller, and have smallish purple flowers. The oval leaves are hairy and the plant is rather unkempt looking. I stake it and have it planted in a shady corner of the vegetable garden. One would hesitate to eat the hairy leaves, but comfrey has long been known to heal bones and perhaps bruises. Once chopped, the leaves taste cucumbery. We mix the chopped herb with chickpeas to serve as a salad.

The third cucumber-flavored herb is borage, an annual. Borage plants can grow quite tall, 4 to 5 feet, especially if staked. They prefer sun, and produce many beautiful downward facing starry blue flowers which, when fading, turn rather pink. This plant is also tall and gawky, like the comfrey, with hairy leaves, but the part we use is the flowers. They are best floated in cold soups, like simple borschts or vichyssoise, or used to decorate salads. Historically, the flowers were candied. The flowers, according to Pliny, were used "to exhilarate and make the mind glad."

All three of these herbs are cucumber-flavored additions to the menu while the actual cucumbers are just starting up their trellises.

* Yes, the leaves of garlic. We let the bulbs stay in the ground year round for the sake of mild flavored garlic leaves.