Sarah Raven - Herb Society President 2007/08

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Sarah Raven our 2007/08 President is a writer, cook, broadcaster and teacher, she is the expert on all things to grow, cut and eat from your garden. In her book The Great Vegetable Plot (2005), Sarah writes: ‘A vegetable garden is a beautiful thing to make, with the extra bonus of producing the best possible things to eat. If you get it right, the whole place can become your market, your haven and your playground.'

This knowledge and enthusiasm is present in all her books, her first The Cutting Garden (1996) won the Garden Writers' Guild Award for Best Specialist Gardening book, ‘The Bold and Brilliant Garden (1999) offers a new approach to planning and planting a garden for sumptuous colour and scent and Grow Your Own Cut Flowers (2002) which is an in-depth guide to growing and arranging your own flowers at home. Sarah's new book Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook (2007) is published by Bloomsbury.

Sarah is an inspirational and passionate teacher, running cooking, flower arranging and gardening courses at the school she set up in 1999 at her Perch Hill Farm in East Sussex . Her mail order company, Sarah Raven's Kitchen and Garden, sells seeds, bulbs, books and her favourite things for the kitchen and garden.

Anyone that saw Sarah in the Gardeners World Special she presented on 'healing plants' back in August 2006, knows that Sarah has a love of herbs. If you happened to miss it you can read about it over on Sarah's website www.sarahraven.com in an article all about Healing Plants, the article also contains the recipe for the Calendula Cream Sarah made on the programme.

We recently asked Sarah to tell us about her favourite herb and without hesitation Sarah told us of her passion and dill. Sarah has kindly written a piece for us where she talks about why she loves this herb, how to grow it and use it, Sarah has also included a delicious recipe for Gravadlax and also Mustard Sauce which you can use to accompany the Gravadlax.

I love dill. It's one of the easiest herbs to grow at any time in the summer and with its light feathery leaves, and brilliant acid-green plateaus of flowers, it looks and tastes fantastic.

At every stage it's a must-have plant. Eat the young tender leaves in a salad to accompany fish and is essential in making gravadlax (see recipe below). It has a taste of succulent grass mixed with soft aniseed. Once it's developed its flowers, these are wonderful to pick. They go with everything and anything in a vase and the flowers, not the flower stems, torn apart and scattered over salad leaves give you the same gentle flavour. Then there are the seeds, perfect forming a crust over roast pork, wrapped in foil and as a topping to quick-baked flat bread.

Grow It - Grow dill from seed. It doesn't like root disturbance and will shoot up to flower quickly if you move it around, so is best sown direct into the garden or into a pot where you want it to grow. It's fine to sow anytime from the middle of spring to the end of summer.

Dill likes bright light, but cool temperatures and a very freely drained soil. On my heavy clay, I add grit to the sowing position to encourage good germination.

It's an herb that is quick to run up to flower. If you want tender young leaves, successional sowing is the key to a continual supply. I try to sow a new pot or line every four to six weeks through the summer. Then I'll always have some plants giving me leaves and some, now mature which I can pick for flowers.

Dill self sows. If you've got it in a corner of the garden this year, it's likely to appear again. I have a beautiful self-sown combination of dill with red orache (or atriplex) in my garden. I just let them get on with it from one year to the next, thinning seedlings of dill to 8-10in/22-25cm. Many people don't bother to thin, but this is a mistake. Too closely spaced, the plants compete with each other for nutrients, water and light and quickly run up to flower, seed and die. Thin them and they live and produce for twice as long as when they're too packed in.

Eat It - Dill leaves have a fantastic flavour to eat with cucumber and the two together make one of my favourite summer salads. The young, soft leaves are lovely coarsely chopped and scattered through any crunchy Cos lettuce salad, or just added to the jug of dressing before you pour it over your leaves.

I use dill leaves in a marinade with fresh salmon to make Gravadlax and the seeds make a delicious light topping for flat-bread to dip into guacamole, aubergine humous or for scooping up mint and tomato-rich Tabouleh.

Arrange It - Acid-green is a wonderful lightener and brightener to rich dark colours, crimson-blacks and port wine reds. One of my favourite arrangements with dill flowers is in a small jug with dark red sunflowers, Helianthus 'Red Sun' with the matching crimson seed pods of Nigella hispanica. This is the perfect delicious-smelling arrangement to put beside your bed.

Sarah Raven's Gravadlax

Ingredients:

2lbs Tailpiece of Salmon, scaled, boned and filleted but with the skin on in two pieces.
Dill Leaves
Slices of Lime or Lemon

Marinade:

1 Heaped Tblspn Sea Salt
1 Heaped Tblspn Caster Sugar
1 Tspn Coarsely crushed Black or White Peppercorns (Do not use the ready crushed ones)
1 Tblspn Calvados or Brandy
Plenty of chopped Dill

Gravlax by Charles Haynes (from [http://www.flickr.com/photos/haynes/11667851/ Flickr account]) {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}

Method:

Prepare the marinade by mixing the ingredients in a small bowl.

Line a shallow dish with cling film and put a quarter of the marinade mixture into the bottom of the dish. Lay the first piece of salmon, skin side down onto the marinade.

Cover with half of the remaining marinade over the salmon and lay the second piece of salmon on to it with the skin side uppermost. Cover with the remaining marinade, rubbing it well into the skin.

Lay some cling film over this, cover with a board and weigh it down with a weight. Chill for at least twelve hours, twenty four is even better.

Drain the salmon well and slice thinly. Garnish with Dill leaves and slices of lime and serve with mustard sauce if you wish.

Mustard Sauce

1 Egg Yolk
2 Tblspns Dijon Mustard
½ tspn Sugar
1 tblspn White Wine or White Wine Vinegar
6 Tblspns Vegetable Oil
Salt, Pepper and chopped Dill

Beat the egg yolk with the mustard and the sugar and stir in the wine. Slowly beat in the oil, salt, pepper and chopped dill. Serve chilled.

Or for people who don’t eat raw eggs:

2 Tblspns Dijon Mustard
1 Tspn Caster Sugar
1 Tblspn White Wine
6 Tblspns Vegetable Oil
A Bunch of Dill, finely chopped
Salt and Pepper

Heat the mustard and sugar in a small pan stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar. Whisk in the white wine and beat over the heat for a few minutes. Add the oil in a steady stream and set aside to cool. When quite cold add the dill.

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