Fresh lemon verbena is a recent newcomer to my herb repertoire. I was familiar with plain dried verbena, a popular constituent of French tisanes, but only this spring did I come across the amazingly vibrant and refreshing verveine citronnelle.

I have been steeping fresh leaves in hot water for a soothing after-dinner drink, cold-steeping them overnight to make an ice tea of sorts, and infusing them in browned butter — much like you would sage — to dress potato gnocchi. But I had yet to take the flavor much further.

The resulting sorbet was of an elusive shade, teetering between yellow and green, and it was the most refreshing thing ever to grace my ice cream machine.

And then one evening, we invited a friend over for dinner at the last minute. We were going to share the excellent leftover lamb we’d brought home from J’Go* the night before, and I planned to sauté some potatoes and dress a few greens to go with it.

For dessert, I felt sure I had everything needed to whip up a quick batch of lemon kefir ice cream, but it turned out I had drunk the last of the kefir, so I decided to make lemon sorbet instead, with some lemon verbena thrown in.

I thought of drawing out the flavor of the leaves by infusing them in hot water and using this infusion as the liquid element of the sorbet, but I doubted there would be enought time to chill the mixture properly before churning. It also seemed more appealing to try and capture the vibrancy of the fresh leaves, some of which gets lost when the leaves are dried or steeped, so I opted for the lavender sugar approach, whizzing the lemon verbena leaves with the sugar into a moist, lemon verbena sugar, which I would then use to sweeten and flavor the sorbet.

Because I worried the little flecks of ground leaf might get in the way of the texture, I strained the mixture before churning. The resulting sorbet was of an elusive shade, teetering between yellow and green, and it was the most refreshing thing ever to grace my ice cream machine.

My friend Estérelle says she makes panna cotta flavored with lemon verbena, which sounds lovely. I think it would also make a good rub for a lamb shoulder, or a syrup to drizzle over strawberry-filled crêpes; if you have your own clever uses for lemon verbena, I’d love to hear them.

* Yes, you read that right! We had dinner at a Paris restaurant and we took the leftover meat home! Maxence asked, and they gave us a doggy bag! A doggy bag! In Paris! We were floored, and enjoyed our reheated gigot even more.

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This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food and wine. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s idiom is, “Avoir/Prendre de la bouteille.”

Literally translated as, “Having/Gaining some bottle,” it is a colloquial expression that illustrates the fact that a thing or a person gains value, experience, or wisdom with age.

Example: “L’entretien s’est bien passé, mais ils ont préféré embaucher un commercial qui avait plus de bouteille.” “The interview went well, but they chose to hire a salesman who had more bottle.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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Pain au levain naturel

If you keep an eye on my Twitter feed or subscribe to the C&Z newsletter, you already know that I’ve been trying my hand at natural starter bread for the past two months.

A natural starter, also called a sourdough starter, is a culture of wild yeasts and friendly bacteria that the baker keeps alive and thriving by feeding it water and flour on a regular basis. When mixed with a larger quantity of water, flour, and salt, and left to ferment, these microorganisms act as a leavening agent that will make the dough rise to form an extraordinarily flavorful loaf, one with mildly acidic notes, but not as sour as the typical San Francisco sourdough — unless that’s what you’re shooting for.

The beauty of such starter breads is that their flavor is complex and unique.

The beauty of such starter breads is that their flavor is complex and unique (because they rely on yeasts and bacteria that are naturally present in grains, no two starters are alike, especially from one region of the world to another), they keep very well (“the [friendly] bacteria somehow delay starch retrogradation and staling, and the acids they produce make the bread resistant to spoilage microbes”*), they are more nutritious than breads leavened with commercial yeast (the long fermentation induced by the starter is said to make the nutrients in whole grain flours considerably easier to absorb, as well as lower the glycemic index of the bread), and they’re as close as one can get to the essence of bread: a mixture of flour, water, and salt that does not rely on a store-bought leavener.

I had long been drawn to this bread-baking approach, but had always shied away from it because it seemed work-intensive and forbidding, and I had trouble relating to the people who wrote about it: the discussions were usually so advanced as to be overwhelming for a beginner. And then one day, I stumbled upon Florence’s blog by way of Clea’s, and I recognized a kindred baker spirit: Florence wrote about the process in clear terms, technical enough that I could grasp the underlying science, but practical enough that I could see it happening in my own kitchen. I was excited, and ready to take on the challenge.

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Two years ago, I received a sweet email from a Canadian woman named Delphine. She explained that she and her French boyfriend run a farm in the Aube, about two and a half hours to the Southeast of Paris, on which they grow — among other things — Saskatoon berries*. Did I know this North American fruit? Did I want to try it?

A new fruit! One I’d never even heard of! Of course I wanted to taste it!

Flavorwise, I find the Saskatoon berry to be a cross between the blueberry and the blackberry: not quite as sweet and a little more mealy, but fragrant, with a lingering hint of almond.

Because Saskatoon berries are only in season for a short period of time in late June (this explains why they’re also called Juneberries), the window in which to obtain fresh berries was rather narrow, and we couldn’t make it work that year, or the next. But Delphine is nothing if not persistent, and the third time was a charm: this year, her younger sister, who lives in Paris, was able to drop by my apartment and kindly deliver a few baskets of the dark purple beauties.

Although the looks and common names of the amelanchier alnifolia make it seem a berry**, botanists will tell you that it is in fact a pome, like the apple and the pear. It grows in clumps on tall shrubs, in the wild or in orchards. It is native to Alaska, Western Canada (like Delphine, who is from Calgary), and to the Northwestern to North Central states of the United States, but it is little known beyond those areas.

Flavorwise, I find it to be a cross between the blueberry and the blackberry: not quite as sweet and a little more mealy, but fragrant, with a lingering hint of almond. They are said to be full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, so they may very well be the next superfood everyone goes crazy over.

We ate some of ours raw — on their own or with yogurt — and because it seemed the Saskatoon berry would thrive wherever the blueberry does, I decided to make a tart inspired by my mother’s blueberry tart, and serve it to friends we’d invited over for a SingStar party.

Photo by Delphine Bouvry.

I used my mother’s easy pâte sablée, which blessedly requires no rolling, only I added a teaspoon of white vinegar to the mix, having recently read that the acid helps make tart crusts flakier by weakening the gluten network. This was confirmed by Harold McGee’s indispensable On Food and Cooking***, and by the delicate texture of my tart crust.

I had a handful of fresh black currants to use so I threw them in with the berries, and I also decided to add almond flour to the filling, to accent that side of the berries’ personality, and to absorb excess juice should they render any. As it turns out, Saskatoon berries don’t lose their shape in the baking — their skin is somewhat thicker than that of blueberries and it doesn’t seem to rupture as easily — but the powdered almonds turned to golden toasty crumbs in the oven that complemented the berries very well.

My friends were suitably tickled to discover a new fruit, and the tart was promptly devoured, in between Don McLean’s American Pie (what else?) and a very impressive solo version of Naughty by Nature’s O.P.P..

Because Delphine’s berry delivery had been generous, I still had some berries to use after that, so I made a fine clafoutis — roughly using this recipe but with a bit of levain — and froze the rest.

Any suggestions on what to do with the frozen berries?

~~~

* To Delphine’s knowledge, theirs is the only farm in France that grows Saskatoon berries. You can buy some directly from them during picking season, for about three weeks in late June. Ferme Moonriver, 1 rue de la Croix, 10140 Unienville (map it!), +33 (0)3 25 92 07 79. (Note that they also raise fowl.)

** In truth, once you start looking into the ins and outs of the term berry and how it’s used in common speech vs. from a botanical point of view, you realize you pretty much get it wrong all the time.

*** On Controlling Gluten Strength (pages 523-525), McGee writes, “There are a number of ingredients and techniques by which the baker controls the gluten strength and consistency of doughs and batters.” And he proceeds to list them, ending with, “Acidity in the dough (…), which weakens the gluten network by increasing the number of positively charged amino acids along the protein chains, and increasing the repulsive forces between chains.”

Photo by Delphine Bouvry.

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