Gardenist: The Herbman

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Aug 1, 2007 6:00PM

When we wrote about the Gardenist project last week, we intimated that our basil "threatened to overrun all the other plants." It wasn't until we were in the midst of pruning the tomato plants yesterday that we realized just how much of an understatement that actually was.

Aside from our normal weeding and the occasional picking of cilantro, we've left most of the herbs alone. But we've got chicken breasts thawing out in the fridge, and we thought that what they really could use is a lemon basil marinade, served with grilled vegetables. Once we were done with the tomato plants we got down to the business of clipping the basil down to size.

As you can see from the picture, we brought in a sizable yield of the good stuff. Separating the leaves from the stems filled our kitchen with a sweet aroma that's still lingering and conjured dormant memories of our misspent youth. As much basil as we clipped from the garden, the plants are still huge. However, now that we've trimmed it somewhat, the rosemary, cilantro and dill weed we planted behind the basil have more sunlight in which to bathe. We've already used the cilantro for guacamole and a mango salsa, but the rosemary is what we're really looking forward to using. We have something special planned for that herb in a couple weeks with some cedar plank salmon. We'll be serving that up with homemade dill aioli.

As always, you can check out both our personal and the Chicagoist Photos Flickr streams for new photos from our garden project.