When Maxence and I went to Japan last year, one of the items I was determined to hunt down and bring back was a bag of shiso seeds to grow my own.

Shiso (pronounced “she-so”) is the Japanese name for an annual herb called Perilla, which belongs to the mint family. Other aliases include beefsteak plant (which makes little sense, if you ask me) or Japanese basil. It is used in quite a few Asian cuisines, but the shiso recipes I’ve encountered have mostly been for Japanese dishes.

Shiso comes in green or purple leaves with a slightly prickly texture and pointy, jagged edges, and it has a unique and vibrant taste that I could describe as herbaceous and citrusy. Like most leafy herbs, I find it is best used raw, the leaves whole or chiffonaded.

The green variety produces more tender and more flavorful leaves than the purple variety, but the latter makes up for that with a potent dyeing action: it is what gives umeboshi its color.

We did find shiso seeds in a deserted gardening section on the very top floor of a Tokyo department store, and I planted them in a pot outside my bedroom window as a cure for travel nostalgia when we got back. They sprouted with very little prodding, and soon developed into a bushy plant* from which I excitedly plucked leaves throughout the summer.

I hadn’t used all of the seeds, so I was able to plant a new batch this year, and while I wait for the teeny green leaves to shoot up from under the soil, I wanted to discuss possible uses for this lovely, lovely herb.

The simplified rule of thumb is that you can use shiso pretty much anywhere you would normally use basil or mint, but I thought we could go into a bit more detail.

As I’ve done before with sage and sorrel, I called out for suggestions on Twitter, and because you’re such an inspired bunch, you came through with great shiso recipes, which I’m listing below along with my own. Thanks to all of you who chimed in, and the comment section is wide open if you want to add more!

See also:
– 45 Things To Do With Fresh Sage,
– 50 Things To Do With Fresh Sorrel.

* I’m an enthusiastic but inexperienced gardener and I put in too many seeds, so some of the smaller seedlings never matured in the shade created by the bigger ones. Live and learn.

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At a C&Z anniversary party three years ago I met David, a reader from L.A. who was spending a few months in France. We’ve been in touch on and off since then, and when David came back to Paris for a vacation in late spring, he very generously brought me a gift.

What he brought was a bag of honey dates grown in Indio, California by Dates by Davall, and a pound of dry roasted hazelnuts from the Freddy Guys orchard in the Willamette* valley in Oregon. He included a note to explain that he gets the former at his farmers market in Santa Monica, and discovered the latter while in Portland.

This struck me as a textbook example of the perfect gift.

I’ve been savoring those dates and hazelnuts sloooowly, trying to make the supply last as long as possible.

Not only are the dates and hazelnuts spectacularly good — the dates soft and caramelly as toffee, the hazelnuts crisp and light as popcorn, and vividly flavorful — but the combo of the two is the ultimate treat. Throw in a square or two of dark chocolate and angels come out from behind the clouds, playing their tiny trumpets.

Beyond the sheer good taste — literally and figuratively — of the present, I love the elegant simplicity of offering ingredients that reflect the work of fine growers I might never have come across otherwise. I love that they come with a personal story, too, and that I get to imagine David visiting those market stalls, sampling the fruits, going cuckoo for them, and buying extra to give out to friends so they could share in his enthusiasm.

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France has a vivid culture of comic books and graphic novels, which are grouped under the general term bande dessinée (literally, drawn strip), often shortened to BD and pronounced bédé. It is a remarkably rich and diverse genre, with titles to appeal to all ages and interests, from kids’ comics to historical sagas, from humorous social commentary to science fiction.

My father has an extensive collection of them, one that filled an entire room in the apartment where I grew up: from floor to ceiling, shelves groaning with several thousand albums he had amassed since his teens, reflecting a passion he further fueled by weekly expeditions to the specialized bookstores of the Latin Quarter.

My sister and I were shaped by this. From the moment we could read we started reading bandes dessinées, and while other children watched television (we owned no tv set, our parents were not interested), we spent our childhood and teenage days ravenously working our way through these storytelling gems, constantly discovering new age-appropriate (and sometimes age-inappropriate, but no less educational) series to delve into.

It was still a time when most people viewed the genre in a mildly disparaging way, believing it boiled down to silly little drawings to keep the kids entertained, but we knew better.

Some series I read and re-read dozens of times, and for a very long time, they were the primary window through which I saw the world, the stories they told and the characters that inhabited them leaving a deeper imprint on me than any book I ever read or movie I ever watched.

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After weeks of skipping my Saturday morning market run for various reasons, I was finally able to go back to the marché des Batignolles this weekend.

It was the perfect morning for a comeback. I’d awoken early, it was mild and sunny, and as I rode my bicycle down the boulevard in my shower-wet hair, I was seized by that swelling feeling of expectation and accomplishment that makes Saturday morning market runs so addictive: you can’t wait to see what glowing things the market stalls will hold, but whatever you end up buying, you know your weekend is bound to be a fine one after you’ve filled the produce drawer, the star-shaped fruit bowl, and the baby green flower vase.

I got half a dozen fresh-laid and mucky eggs and just as many white peaches, a hefty bundle of rhubarb stalks, a bouquet of orange and crimson dahlias, some ripe-tender tomatoes, and, most excitedly, from my favorite grower, a bunch of small, gleaming, taut-skinned eggplants — my first this year.

The eggplant and I have a bit of a complicated relationship*: I adore it when it’s well cooked, but I’m always suspicious of the oil content when it is. And I’ve long found it tricky to cook right myself — too often it turned out a spongy, bitter mess — so I didn’t eat it nearly as often as I would have liked.

But with time and experience, I have found that a) I have better success cooking small eggplants, no more than 200 grams or 7 ounces each, and b) whether grilled, roasted, or sautéed, these guys need to cook a good long while in order to become the best silky self that they can be.

Tomato salad with roasted eggplant.

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