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Give me your mint, your Thai basil, your cilantro...

11 years ago

And a beer.

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Comments (4)

rob333 (zone 7b)
11 years ago
That looks tasty. What else is on it besides the herbs?
petalique
Original Author
11 years ago
Rob333, it is tasty and very easy. I make this sort of Thai variation often, but pretty much play it by ear each time, depending on what I have in hand. In the spring and summer, the herbs are usually available. Experiment with what you relish. Usually I include the following ingredients.

-- foundation of pizza or flat bread. I make the f b from scratch. For pizza dough, I sometimes make slow rise/cold rise dough or use a grocery store pizza dough.

-- I have an aluminum pizza pan. I like to put a thin layer of oil, then a thin layer of fine cornmeal down.

-- I usually cook at the mid-bottom area of the oven with the convection fan ON. Temp varies. Maybe ~ 440 to 500 deg F.

Ingredients usually include ex large shrimp, fresh minced garlic, maybe some shrimpy garlicky oil, grated prole Parmesan, a bit of white buffalo like mozzarella (not much) and maybe a bit of some other cheese.

-- Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce -- not too much

I keep an eye on it while in the oven, but perhaps 6-8 minutes ( depends on the thickness of the foundation dough and how much "stuff" I put on it. You'll get a feel for it. I tend to not like any soggy dough, but I don't like a dried out crust either.i like a toasted bottom to the crust/cooked dough foundation.

I usually add some dried red pepper flakes to give it a bit of kick. Not too much. To taste.

When cooked, done, I remove from the hot oven, add the fresh green herbs (Thsi basil, cilantro, fresh spearmint (wash the spearmint to remove any grit or sand). Sometimes I tent it with aluminum foil or partially cover it w a large pan lid. Let it breath so that it doesn't get sogged from steam.

Sometimes, I return it to the warm oven (heat off).

We eat it hot or cold for brunch (narrow sliced sections). It is good at room temp as well.

I'm thinking that I will try baby arugula on the next one.

Use you imagination and whatever flavors you enjoy. Please send feedback and photos!

You can also squeeze a bit of fresh lime juice onto it (avoid the center). Jalapeño would be fun.

Enjoy
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I just used some Kentucky Colonel mint this evening (strong spearmint flavor) mixed with some salad greens. I did a chiffonade, and sprinkled it on top, and it's a wonderful addition to a salad. Some lime mints can also be fabulous in salsas along with your cilantro. And don't forget the Mint Julep! and Mojito! Also, mints are great for infusing simple syrups for cold or hot teas later. My recipe is a ratio of 2 to 1. Two cups of sugar, to one cup of water. Slowly bring to a boil til clear. Remove from heat, bruise the mint to release the oil and place the whole leaves in the syrup. Let set til cool. I remove the leaves and store the syrup in a bottle in the refrigerator for up to a week (though it never lasts that long!). Wonderful also if infused with some lemon rind also. So good to sweeten a nice summer iced tea or a nice hot, herbal tea, or green tea. Especially great for cold teas because there's none of that trying to dissolve sugar in a cold medium. It's already a syrup! Some of the better restaurants here bring simple syrup to your table when you order hot or cold tea so you can sweeten to your liking. It's a very elegant presentation. Some will make simple syrup on a ratio of 1 to 1. One cup of water to one cup of sugar. I call this simple water. If you want that intense syrup, you need a 2 to 1 ratio. It will work with the 1 to 1 though. But as a cook it's one of my pet peeves....1 to 1 is SIMPLE WATER, not syrup. I've also made a rosemary simple syrup (YUM!) and a cinnamon basil simple syrup. There are SO many different types of mint out there now, you have such freedom to express yourself with flavor!
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Seeds will only germinate and become plants if they were mature to start with. Seeds will only mature on a living plant. It's doubtful if a plant grown indoors will have reached maturity before it died, or lived long enough for any seeds to have reached maturity - but there's no harm in trying, is there? Curly parsley, like other parsleys, is a biennial. That means that it lives out its entire life cycle over 2 years. In its second year, it will produce flowers, then seeds, and those seeds take quite some time to reach maturity. No amount of watering will bring a dead plant back to life. Certain deciduous plants can LOOK dead during winter, but there is still life in the roots, and usually in the stems (branches) as well - it shuts down and goes to sleep, and will bounce back in spring - but parsley is not one of these. If parsley looks dead, it is dead. Thoroughly dead. You can grow coriander (cilantro) at any time of the year, provided the conditions provided for it are right. Because it is a very short-lived plant (about 2 weeks in my subtropical part of the world), you'll need to do successive plantings, about every 2-3 weeks. Best to allow it to self-seed (ie drop ripe seeds and go from there without any intervention on your part). Hence - best outside. To again quote a long-departed old gardener friend of mine: "God didn't make houses, and he didn't make pots, either". Which means that most plants do better planted outside in the garden. What a lot of people forget is that (a) plants usually get much bigger and healthier when planted outside; (b) indoor plants are inhibited by the amount of dirt and grease which covers their leaves (c) all plants will be stunted to some degree when planted in pots (and usually the pots will be several sizes too small!); (d)the light coming through glass windows is FILTERED light - filtering out certain rays of the sun which plants need. I suggest you use the search facility here to browse through the many posts on the herbs you mention. eg: Here is a link that might be useful: search results for 'parsley'
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sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)
11 years ago
A favorite of ours as well. Using what the garden brings. Snap peas and pea shoots. My arugula, second planting is up, DH likes anchovies and olives.

Have not made mozzarella yet this season. Fresh garden tomatoes are a few weeks away. Herb goat cheese stuffed zucchini flowers are going on mine this weekend. A bit of prosciutto. Hope my basil survived the storms.
l pinkmountain
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
OMG that looks and sounds SO GOOD!

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