The fun thing about cooking with herbs, is that once you get a sense for what goes with what, you can do pretty much whatever you want to. Start with a favorite recipe, see what herbs are looking and smelling good today, and take your standard recipe to a new level. Tonight I’m going to recycle a family favorite that starts with cooked chicken and softened cream cheese, mixed with (fill in your herbs and seasonings of choice) and then surrounding that filling with purchased crescent roll dough, which is then rolled in dry bread crumbs (mixed with more herbs de jour) and baked. The possibilities are endless, and as long as you don’t use an excess of overpowering herbs, the result will be delectable but not predictable.

In our climate zone, it doesn’t get much better than this, with the garden coming in, lush herbs, and only a foretaste of the bugs and swelter that comes with full summer. While enjoying the here and now, it’s not a bad idea to prep for the cold, gardenless months to come. Even though I’ve claimed the august title of “Herb Guy”, I don’t claim to be an expert, and I’m still learning, as I try different growing and preserving techniques with my herbs. I’ve always reached for dried herbs to enhance my winter stews, but this year I’ve going to freeze some of my excess produce. Most of what I’ve read calls for spreading the herbs on a cookie sheet to freeze them, but I’m partial to the ice cube tray method, in which the chopped herbs are packed into ice cube trays and frozen to yield nice little cubes of flavor.

Freezing should lock in the herb flavor, but does destroy the texture of the leaf. This is not a problem for a long-simmered stew or sauce, but may be an issue with, say, an herb omelet. So I’m going to experiment this year with blanching, dumping the chopped herbs into a big pot of boiling water, and then straining them almost immediately. Since (as mentioned in a previous entry) I have a virtually unlimited supply of chives, I’m freezing a batch of raw chives and one of the blanched herb. I’ll let you know this winter if there is any discernable difference between the two versions.

Almost everyone loves pasta, and the fresh herb season brings a whole new dimension to pasta sauces. This is a serious win win situation. Just cook a quantity of your favorite pasta and chop up a pile of your herbs of choice. Depending on mood and your judgment of what would tickle the taste buds of the folks you are feeding, there are several directions in which you can turn. Purists may prefer to just toss the hot pasta with olive oil and herbs, and maybe parmesan cheese. Or cook a sauce, incorporating the flavors of meat, tomato or stock, quick cooked or long simmered, and don’t forget the garlic.

For tonight’s farfalle, I started by browning and draining the fat from some Italian sausage. Next a couple chopped onions and garlic joined the sausage until tender, and them some slivers of sweet and hot peppers (first harvest from this year’s garden). For the herbs, I picked and chopped a huge pile of oregano, basil, curly leaf parsley and chives, and some stevia since I like a sweet touch to the sauce sometimes. No tomatoes from my garden yet, so I added a large can of chopped tomatoes and some V-8 juice. Whoops, too watery now, so a little dissolved corn starch to thicken as desired. Season to taste, and enjoy.

Oregano seems to have an affinity for ground beef, and is used in a lot of Mexican cooking, so it’s a natural addition to taco meat. And of course, some finely chopped chives. These are not to take the place of your usual taco seasoning, but a fresh herb addition. It’s become part of my cooking routine, to look at every dish with an eye towards what herbs might add a bit of fresh flavor.

The growing season is a joy primarily because of the immediate connection between the plants you pick and the food you eat. Freezing, canning or drying your excess vegetables and herbs carries with it some of that pleasure of having grown it yourself, but with a slight remove, and certainly with a loss of the fresh factor. You just can’t beat going right from the picking to the pot.

Lemon thyme lends a nice flavor to pork, among other favorites. A marinade of your herbs with oil and vinegar (olive oil and balsamic vinegar on pork loins tonight) can be left on the meat as it cooks. When I first started growing herbs, I avoided thyme because the tiny leaves were a pain to pick. Then I saw a TV chef working with herbs, and realized how much easier it is to pick the whole stem of thyme and strip the leaves down the length of the stem between thumb and finger. This is now my preferred technique for any of the herbs that grow as leaves along a stem, such as oregano, marjoram, lemon balm and rosemary. And it has the added benefit of giving you fragrant fingertips. For those stems of thyme and the like that branch extensively, making them less amenable to the fingertip strip, I use in the water for steaming vegetables or just lay the whole stem on top of the cooking food and discard it before serving.

One underutilized technique for cooking with fresh herbs is a rub. Most fans of grilling and barbecue know about dry rubs, in which a mixture of dried herbs and spices are sprinkled onto your meat, fish or poultry and gently rubbed into the surface with your fingertips. I don’t know if it’s still technically a dry rub, when you are using fresh, moist herbs, but it sure works great.

A fairly fine chop helps to prevent your herbs from flaking off the meat. There are plenty of kitchen gadgets for mincing herbs, or you can use a food processor, but if you are comfortable with knives, you can get a pretty fine mince without the gadget cleanup. I’ll clump my fresh herb mix into a compact bunch on the cutting board with one hand and chop along as I feed the compressed pile to the blade. After the initial chop, a rock (holding one end of your large knife or cleaver stationary on the board and rapidly chopping along with the other) or a roll (one hand on each end of the blade alternating pressure as the curve of the blade meets the board) will soon yield a lovely mince of herbs.

For tonight’s boneless chicken thighs, I’m thinking thyme, oregano, rosemary and tarragon, with maybe just a bit of dill. After incorporating the rub into every nook and cranny of the meat (also works with some vegetables) you can grill, roast, bake or even microwave until tinder. If using a larger cut that will require prolonged dry heat, a generous coating of olive oil before applying the rub will help keep your food from drying out. A fresh herb rub is pretty much foolproof, allows endless variations in your mix of herbs, and lets you play with your food before you cook it.

When is a weed not a weed? When it’s an herb. Presumably, most of the herbs we prize so highly were at one point, gathered by savvy cooks from the woodlands and meadows of yore, growing wild. Some of our culinary herbs (like basil) are pretty demanding in their requirements for sun and soil, and many a time my tendency to rush the season has resulted in a late frost wiping out my initial basil planting. Other, equally delightful herbs, are anything but picky, and literally grow like weeds.

Some wise gardener once said, that a weed is any plant growing where you didn’t intend for it to grow. Several years ago, I finally tackled the overdue project of getting rid of the creosote coated landscaping timbers that the gardener who owned this house before us had used to construct their raised beds. After laboriously tearing up and hauling away the offensive timbers, I intensively rototilled the garden patch (after incorporating a truckload of manure, a gift from the stable of a friend of my wife’s). At the time, my herb garden was part of the main garden patch. I did such a great job rototilling, that some little particle of chives and of lemon balm root was spread to every square inch of garden soil. Ever since then, chives and lemon balm have been my biggest weed nemesis.

After years of diligent weeding, I have mostly eradicated my favorite herb (chives) and it’s buddy lemon balm from my current raised beds. My herb garden is now mostly in assorted planters on the deck, so adding some flavor to a dish is only steps away from the kitchen. However, I use such quantities of chives, that I’ve let it run wild in a couple of the paths between my beds It doesn’t mind being stepped on, and provides an endless supply of chivey goodness. Speaking of which, I’ll go hack a few handfuls for tonight’s meatloaf.