When every week at the farmers market brings new vegetables to eat, it’s easy to miss the seasonal progression of herbs. That would be a mistake, though, since each new herb that arrives through spring and summer brings its own pleasures. Two of my favorites have shown up in the last couple of weeks, along with the foods I like to cook them with.
David Myers describes the flavor of lovage as “cold and piercing,” but to me it tastes like super-charged celery. Vegetal, snappy, and concentrated, it’s extraordinarily versatile: In the last few weeks I’ve used it in a cool lettuce soup and had it in an incredibly refreshing summer cocktail with prosecco that tasted like photosynthesis run amok. I’ve also used the herb in a yearly favorite from Alice Waters—hamburgers made with a fistful of coarsely chopped lovage (and, this year, a not insignificant amount of minced green garlic) so that the herbs provide a sharp, fresh counterpoint to the primal meatiness. It’s a winner: My one-year-old ate a two-ounce version and banged on the table until I brought her another. My wife was somewhat more polite but no less insistent.
Summer savory is in the sharp-and-dusty Mediterranean flavor category, like marjoram or oregano. The name in German, Bohnenkraut, means “bean herb,” and beans of all kinds love it. Fresh beans are just showing up in the New York farmers markets—tiny haricots verts, colorful arrays of green, purple, and waxy yellow string beans, and the broad, rich Romanos. I’ll blanch an assortment in heavily salted water, then toss the cut-up pieces with a little olive oil and that summer savory chopped fine. The bite of the herb perks up and rounds out the flavor of the beans. The same trick works later in the year when the fresh shell beans arrive. I like these simple bean salads even better at room temperature than hot, which makes them ideal summer food for picnics or just evenings when it’s too damn hot to stand in front of a stove.
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