After the very bad weather that prevailed all over Mauritius for the whole month of January, first with the non-stop daily heavy rains then followed by the tropical cyclone bringing again more rains flooding everywhere, these days it is rare to see some nice green herbs on the market stalls...
Yes my friends, after such a bad weather , nearly all vegetables and herbs plantations of the island have been affected...Since some days now, the prices of all vegetables and little herbs that you find are costing 5 to 10 times more than one month back!!!
Mint is actually one of my favorite herbs to use in my cuisine...the one I am finding these days on the market stalls are just not of good quality!
Thankfully I have my brother in law who is in the plantation field, who got some nice ones standing strong!
So these days, whenever I receive some fresh mint from him, the first thing I do is to plan for the future days...keep that green beauty the longer time possible...
One effective way for me to achieve this is to fry them in olive oil until crispy...
I then drained the excessive oil and reserve them both!
One tip though, if you want to try same please make sure to not overheat your olive oil, the maximum temperature for safe olive oil frying is to be always below 180 degrees celcius.
As from 184 degrees - 200 degrees, olive oil starts to smoke and normally this is not good thing to do!
Once maximum oil is drained from the leaves, reserve the crispy leaves in an airtight container and keep in a cool and dry place until time for you to use them!
The olive oil in which you fried the leaves will be super flavorful + so green in color...use it on your salad once it's cooled down or even on your pizzas!
You can actually make this with any type of herbs you wish and the results are always amazing!
These crispy green herbs goes in a lot of different dishes of my bistro...come visit me one day to enjoy the food I prepare together with my family!
How you do to preserve your herbs when times are hard like mine!?
I would love to hear from you and please do share any techniques that can be helpful for me and everyone reading my blog!
Wish you all a great end of the day!
Thank you!
@progressivechef
Great tips! I love frying sage in brown butter until it's crispy and then eating with any pasta tossed in the oil.
What a good tip!. When I have a surplus of cilantro, parsley, or some other tender herbs, I chop them and freeze them in ice cube trays. Once frozen, I pop then out and store in ziplock bags.
I do the same. :)
I have been doing this also, specially at home, but for the bistro i find that frying them gives the best results out!
" GREENER THAN GREEN!!! Whooooa. When its green. It is Agriculture !!!!
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting on my post my friend!
Wow thank you! Did not know this! Now I can preserve my basil and have basil oil to use in my pesto too! Thank you for sharing and tons of Valentines Day hugs to you friend!
Oh yes my friend! Basil works amazingly well too! You can do so many things from there! Thanks so much for the love my friend, sorry for not being present like before!
I miss your posts so much, but you will see me soon!
I miss you too! Hugs and I wish the warmth of the sun in Mauritius hugs you tight!
Green leaves does it better.. Yeah.. Food made easy.
Nice.
When I saw your head image before clicking in, I thought it’s a glass work! =)
Cool tip to preserve mint by frying in olive oil. I’ve never tried that, only put it in the freezer when it’s not in immediate use or kept in the pot/garden. But too bad its fresh flavor is almost all lost that way.
I love mint too. One of my favorite recipes is to mix it with pistachios and vanilla/coconut ice cream 🍨:D
At home I do same as you my friend, but now in my restaurant, I find that this way of doing it works better for me!
Oh yes mixing mint with pistachios, vanilla and coconut is simply amazing!
How long will they stay good like that? Do you refrigerate them after packing them up, or just keep them in a pantry? I worry about the oil becoming rancid. We freeze ours, but they're no longer beautiful like a fresh herb after freezing -- yours are still lovely.
Also, a few months ago you posted about planting banana trees, I hope they survived the rough weather!
The last time I tried them, i finished them all in less than 10 days and they were amazingly good, It's true in my case I am using quite a lot and on regular basis, but i will say that they can stay great up to 15 days. Which is simply great for me!
I love freezing too, i will share some of my ways of freezing herbs soon!
Oh my goodness...the banana trees!!! I am actually working only 5 minutes away from the plantation area and i've not yet gone there since my last post on them!
Some days back I asked my sister to go take some pictures and show me how the place is looking...I was shocked!!! I will post on them soon...check it out!
Wow! I will definitely try this! I thought your first image was a picture of seaweed. I thought, maybe when a storm blows in, a consolation would be there is some edible seaweed with it.
I dry herbs more than any other way of preserving them. I put some in vinegar, too, like elephant garlic flowers. I put some herbs in honey, and some in gin, lol, to make flavored cocktails. I put some in a jar with sugar or salt, to flavor them. I have so many things in jars, sometimes it looks like a mad scientist laboratory, lol.
And I do bring some plants indoors, like mint. It doesn't take much to keep mint going for a couple months. But I never thought of frying them in oil. Thank you!
These fried leaves will really look amazing on a plated dish like the one of SIC!!! I am just wondering about some wild leaves, that you usually make us discover, fried like this...must be amazing!
Thanks for sharing you lovely techniques in preserving herbs! In fact I would love to discover that mad scientist lab btw!