It’s Throwback Thursday. Time for a cookbook review of something old, something still important.
From 1990 to 2007, Jerry Traunfeld was the executive chef of the Herbfarm Restaurant just outside Seattle. In 2000, he published The Herbfarm Cookbook, still a tome to be carefully read, treasured, and most of all used.
Set on rich farmland just west of the Cascades, the Herbfarm has acres of land devoted to, what else, herbs and vegetables. This amazing restaurant was and remains a leader, a world leader, in using local ingredients to create amazing, natural meals. Here “local” means plucked just hours or moments ago from the garden.
The restaurant is world class and a destination you owe yourself a visit to. Before you next traipse off to Paris or London for the best in food, take a spin to Seattle. You’ll want to return. Suzen and I have dined there and have memories that simply cannot fade.
Jerry was the innovator who put such enormous emphasis on fresh-right-now. And, with an imagination as broad as the Cascades, he presents in The Herbfarm Cookbook an array of ideas that you will find intriguing as you read them, delicious as you eat them. Laden with herbs.
It’s a big book, well over 400 pages. There are the “standard” chapters: first course, pasta, vegetables, fish and shellfish, poultry and meat, breads, desserts, sorbets. But inside those pages, each recipe is adorned with deeps hints of fresh herbs plucked at their seasonal best.
You can begin with Spring Sorrel and Chive Soup or Lettuce and Tarragon Soup. Those titles, and all the other ones in the book, tell you something: the herbs are not little additions to each dish but the fundamental ingredients. So it’s Herbed Clam Chowder and Herbal Chicken Soup. Now, if you are worried about being herbed to death, which can happen in some books or restaurants, you can rest at ease. Yes, the herbs are prominent, but not dominant. That chicken soup uses only basil, green onions, tarragon and marjoram. In tablespoon quantities, I grant you, but it’s balanced. Intensely balanced.
The Herbfarm Garden Salad is not one recipe but many. There is a four-page table here of what ingredients to possibly use over the course of spring, summer, and fall. The salad will never be the same twice. And you would not want it to be. What it is each day, is the best it can be depending on what is available in the garden. In Seattle, with the clouds bumping against the mountains, you never know day-to-day, season-to-season, or year-to-year, what sun and rain and soil will have yielded.
Little bites at the start include Herb Tempura, fried herbs and edible flowers. Or Onion and Sage Tarts or Herb Home-Cured Salmon. It’s the Pacific Northwest, so crab is never far from the table, as in Crab and Lemon Thyme Soufflés with Chervil Sauce.
Vegetable dishes radiate flavor here: Spinach with Sorrel, Mint, and Anchovy, Delicata Squash with Rosemary, Sage, and Cider Glaze. And, I’m serious, Potatoes with Lavender and Rosemary. In Washington State, you will find lavender fields that rival Provence. At the Herbfarm, you will taste the lavender or sip it.
Seafood offerings include: Seared Sea Scallops with Carrot-Marjoram Sauce and Steamed Mussels with Rosemary and Roasted Garlic Sabayon.
Sometimes a classic dish is simply given a herb boost: Dilled Chicken Piccata or Chicken Breasts in Tarragon Cream. Sometimes the combinations can be more complex and French: Sautéed Duck Breasts with Mint, Coriander and Olives, or Braised Lamb Shanks with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Orange, and Rosemary.
The Dessert chapter is about chemistry, about infusing simple syrups or custards with herb flavor to create a component that amplifies the complete dessert dish. There’s a two-page table on Herbal Infusion for Desserts giving the proportions and suggested parings. For example, Lemon Verbena syrup or cream paired with apricots, melon, nectarines, peaches or even rhubarb. There are dozens of combinations here and any one of them will put an amazed smile on your dinner guests. On you, too.
There’s Lemon Verbena Ice Cream and Bay Leaf Crème Brulèe. A Raspberry, Riesling, and Rose Geranium Gratin. It’s easy when you dine at the Herbfarm to think you might just dine on dessert alone. I started to, but Suzen raised her finger, and I was meekly obedient. I just ordered up a Rosemary Lemonade.
When first published, this book was at the forefront of the fresh and “herby” movement. Luckily, that movement has spread and we are all more familiar and more accustomed to enhancing our meals with something beyond that flat-leaf parsley. Luckily for us, the recipes in The Herbfarm Cookbook are timeless. It’s easier to find the ingredients now. And it is always time to enjoy inspired, unsurpassed recipes.
Cook from this book and it will stay open on your counter. You may even take up gardening.