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Welcome to the world of the herbs and their use in our culinary world. Before we go any further, I must point you in the direction of two excellent books which will provide you with all you need to know about every herb you can use in cooking.

Jekka McVicar, is one of Britain’s top experts on the use of herbs for both culinary and medicinal use. She grows over three hundred varieties of herb in her nursery at Jekka’s Herb Farm. Her book, ‘Jekka’s Complete Herb Book’, ISBN 1-85626-349-5, published by Kyle Cathie Limited in 1994 has been reprinted at least 7 times.

Jekka is well respected as an expert in the culinary world and has appeared on television with many celebrity chefs. My favourite recollection was with Rick Stein when they had an interesting conversation about which herbs made you, ‘break wind’. She is a regular contributor to the Chelsea and Hampton Court Palace Flower shows as well as the Royal Horticultural Society Halls in Westminster.

Her book is indeed an encyclopedia of plant information – how to grow and propagate herbs in your own garden and how to use them in recipes and medicinal remedies. We thank Jekka and her publishers, Kyle Cathie Limited for granting us permission to use material from her book.

We most highly recommend it!

Our second recommendation comes from the highly popular, ‘Australian Woman’s Weekly Home Library Series’, Cooking with Herbs. ISBN 0-949892-58-0. In this book you will find a description of each popular herb and its use in all types of recipes from around the world It also contains an excellent collection of recipes which use each herb described.

How to use herbs in recipes to flavour food

When you add a herb to food, you get flavours you can’t get any other way. Fresh wonderfully pretty and aromatic, they range from pungent through to light, delicate, scented varieties, and the more you use them the more you will enjoy them. They can be the star of a dish or support the natural flavour of other ingredients. Some herbs in the recipes that follow will be familiar to you, others will be new – and that is the part of the taste adventure ahead. A bonus is that by using herbs you can eliminate or reduce other flavour enhancers in your recipes such as salt. Many herbs can be dried successfully following the methods outlined later in this section.

Herbs are also used in medicine and this book gives you a good understanding of what and how these herbs are used both in culinary recipes and medicinal recipes. You can read more about herbs by clicking the following link: