Recipe : Mint Butter Cookies

A week ago, I posted one of my favourite recipes, for Tarragon Butter Cookies. Tonight I just finished baking the mint version, and I now have a new favourite!

I replaced the tarragon with mint, as suggested by Madelin Wajda, but since I didn't have mint extract, I just left out the extract altogether, and used 4 Tbsp of mint instead of 3 Tbsp. I used my Chocolate Mint, which is a lovely version of peppermint which offers a hint of After Eight mint wafers. It is a beautiful dark mint (photo right), with purple flowers, and I don't mind that it's taken over a large part of my "tea" garden, other than feeling guilty to not use it in the kitchen more often. I have some easy recipes for mint syrup, mint jelly, mint ice cream, and of course, mint tea...

Tonight I lightly greased the pans with butter, and the cookies slid out with ease. My 3 pan method worked smoothly (every 4 min: top pan out, bottom pan to top, new pan to bottom), and I found that 8 minutes was perfect for my oven (convection gas). I finished cutting, sugaring and baking (and sampling!) all 12 dozen cookies in under an hour.

Recipe : Tarragon Butter Cookies

This is a lovely recipe I found here last year (by Madelin Wajda of Willow Pond Farm), when the tarragon seedlings my friend Lily gave me, flourished in my small herb garden, and I turned to the internet for a tarragon recipe.

The tarragon gives the cookies small flecks of green, and a mild and pleasant herbal flavour. To my delight, the kids were crazy about them, too. With the sugar crystals on top, and the bite size portions, it makes a nice little cookie for entertaining, and a good conversation piece. I've not yet found anyone who could identify the herb in the cookie.

I would love to try making a mint version of this cookie, but I have again a good supply of tarragon in my garden, and feel obliged to use it first.

Tarragon Butter Cookies

• 1 C butter or margarine
• 1 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 t baking soda
• 2 ½ C flour
• 1 t vanilla
• 3 T finely chopped fresh (or 1 T dried) tarragon leaves*

Cream butter and sugar, add egg and mix well. Mix in flour and baking soda, then tarragon and vanilla. Roll into two long rolls about 1 1/2 inch in diameter and refrigerate overnight. Slice into 1/8 inch slices, sprinkle with sugar, and bake at 350 degree for 10-12 minutes.

*Other herbs such as rose geranium, lemon verbena, and mint may also be used. If you do use these herbs, replace the vanilla with 1 t. of rose water, lemon extract, or mint extract, respectively.

(Makes about 5 dozen)

I've found it easier to roll the dough into 3 rolls (mine are about 16" long) or even 4 rolls (12" long), since the shorter rolls are easier to handle, and to find a tray for, when putting them in the fridge overnight. Also, instead of "sprinkling" with sugar, I cut the whole roll into disks, and then press each one top-down onto a plate of white sugar before setting it onto the cookie sheet.

I prepared my dough today, so if all goes well, I'll bake the cookies tomorrow, and then add some photos of the process, and the result.

9 Sept 2006 - I baked the cookies two nights ago, and they turned out great, as always. I end up with 12 dozen bite-sized cookies, not 5 dozen. I freeze the extras in plastic containers. This time I used ungreased non-stick pans, but they may have benefited from being slightly greased. Also, mine baked in only 8 - 10 minutes. I bake two pans at a time, but stagger the start times, so one pan is being replaced every 4-5 minutes, with the 3rd pan being prepared in between.

Tip: While cutting & preparing the dough, it helps to keep the uncut rolls of dough in the fridge, since it gets harder to handle when soft.

For some reason, I have not, after repeated tries, been able to upload photos to this post. Wierd!

Parsley Recipe : Parsley-Walnut Pesto

Inspired by my previous post about parsley, and how it is rich in vitamins A and C, calcium, iron and beta-carotene, I decided to find a few good parsley recipes, and try something out for dinner. Not just recipes using a few teaspoons of parsley, but ones which used a significant amount of parsley, enough to qualify it as a parsley recipe.

My first thought was a tabouleh salad. There are many variations on tabouleh, the more authentic middle eastern ones having a large proportion of parsley, the western ones having a high proportion of bulgur. But I don't have bulgur on hand, and this anyhow is something which the children may not share my taste for, so I kept looking, and found the perfect recipe : parlsey-walnut pesto.

The recipe, which I found at here on the site www.care2.com, was inspired by Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen (view at Amazon.ca) (or view at Amazon.com) by Donna Klein (HP Books, 2001). Here goes:

Parsley - Walnut Pesto

• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted (see Hint)
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup packed fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
• 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 Tablespoon plain unseasoned bread crumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, or to taste
• 16 ounces spaghettini or other thin pasta

1. In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, process walnuts, oil, parsley, broth, garlic, bread crumbs, and salt until smooth.

2. Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente. Reserve 1/4 cup cooking liquid, then drain pasta in colander.

3. Place pasta in a large serving bowl and add the parsley-walnut pesto and reserved cooking liquid. Toss well to combine and serve at once. Serves 6.

Helpful Hints - To toast walnuts, bake in a single layer on a baking sheet in preheated oven at 350F for 5 minutes, stirring halfway through baking. Or heat a skillet to medium, then add nuts and cook, stirring constantly, until golden, 3 - 5 minutes. Remove from pan to cool.

I didn't have walnuts on hand, so I used pine nuts, not roasted (I'm too lazy). Also, no vegetable broth, just used water, and increased it to 1/2 cup, so that the pesto would combine in the food processor. It was a very thick consistency, and the garlic was very sharp, so I decided that it would benefit from being cooked slightly, and made into a pesto cream sauce.

I used fusilli, my preferred pasta shape for cream sauces. I removed the tails of the jumbo shrimp, and fried them lightly in oil / butter until opaque and pink, set them aside. Sauteed chopped yellow pepper (red may have looked better) in oil and a small amount of water until soft, a few minutes. Added the pesto, and simmered for about 5 minutes. Added in cream and milk, for a creamy consistency, continued to heat until pasta was ready. Added in drained pasta and added back the shrimps, and heated for another 5 minutes, to allow some of the sauce to be absorbed. The photo shows the result. The taste was very good!

This parsley pesto will be a new favourite recipe of mine, since I always have an abundant supply of parsley in the garden, and have not had success with sweet basil (except to feed the slugs). I grew African blue basil one year, it is a beautiful plant, but for a whole season of growth, it yielded such a small amount of leaves, that I needed to add in other herbs to make one small batch of pesto.

Parsley as a Garden Ornamental

Parsley is well known as a garnish, and is very versatile in the kitchen, with very few dishes not benefitting from its flavour and colour. It is high in vitamins A and C, calcium, iron and beta-carotene. But it is quite undervalued for its ornamental quality in the garden.

In our mild Vancouver weather, parsley continues green and fresh into the winter, only mildly affected by the frost, and is early to offer new growth in Spring. This makes it worthy of not only a spot in the herb garden, but a consideration for the edge of the garden border also.

There are two familiar varieties. The regular or curly parsley (Petroselinum crispum; photo right) is a wonderful garnish, and holds its shape well when refrigerated (wrapped in a moist paper towel). The flat leafed or Italian parsley (Petroselinum neapolitanum; photo left) does not hold up as well for garnishing, but its stronger flavour suits it well to cooking. Both have great ornamental value, and add nice texture and deep green colour to the garden.

The only drawback is that parsley is a biennial, which means that in its second year, instead of offering its lush growth of leaves, it diverts its energy to sending up a tall flower head (umbrel). This may be attractive in its own funky way, but a significant diversion from the low-growing green of the previous year. If you are not interested in this effect, or in gathering seeds, the solution is to refresh the parsley patch each Spring (effectively treating the parsley as an annual). Even so, you will benefit from its greenery through the winter, when many perennials are visibly absent.