5/5/2023 0 Comments Sage advice![]() ![]() Lynda Hallinan's Blog: Courting in the country Suffice to say, my sage hasn’t been safe from my secateurs ever since. But that was before I ordered tortelloni di ricotta con burro e salvia – handmade buffalo ricotta tortelloni with butter and sage – from Auckland Italian eatery Pasta & Cuore. The only time I deigned to actually pick sage – and even then, it was only a leaf or two at most – was to stuff it up a roast chook or to soothe a sore throat. It shames me to admit that for many years, I only grew sage for its looks (ditto curly parsley, which makes for a decorative frill at the front of a flower bed). Perhaps all those dearly departed sages felt unloved. I’ve come to accept that, in this climate, I will kill as many sages as I buy, with the only variable being the length of time between shopping bag and compost bin. We get too much rain (up to 2400mm per year) and most of it falls in winter, filling our tanks and replenishing Auckland’s water reservoirs while also rotting the roots off all my sun-loving Mediterranean herbs including sage, rosemary, santolina and thyme. The sole survivor has since tried to climb out of the garden and now clings desperately to the rock wall around it, the way a child who is still learning to swim refuses to let go of the edge of the pool. Two summers ago, I planted nine purple sage plants in a ring around my herb garden. It is happy-go-lucky here in a dry summer, attracting a bothering of bees to its blue spires when all is well, but it sulks terribly when the weather turns the soil sodden. Try as a might, I can’t seem to keep it alive for more than a season. Sadly, in my garden sage is the maidenhair fern of herbs. I’ve planted plain English sage, Salvia officinalis, golden sage, Salvia officinalis ‘Aurea’, and the pink, purple and cream variegated form ‘Tricolor’, which I dismissed as gaudy until I came across it in a stylish Swedish meadow, mass-planted with feathery bronze fennel. Over the years I’ve planted dozens of sage seedlings. Guest Blog: Lynda Hallinan's shear hard slog I’m now writing this blog with a renewed appreciation for freelancing (no IT department to tut tut at butter fingers on the keyboard), and for the hearty state of my purple sage Salvia officinalis gets its scientific name from the Latin salvere, meaning “to save” or “to be in good health”. Then I picked a handful of arugula and some ‘Rapunzel’ cherry tomatoes from my garden, added a sprinkle of chopped parsley, a drizzle of balsamic glaze and, with an audience of two drooling dogs, scoffed the lot. I boiled the gnocchi for 60 seconds, drained it and tossed it into the burro bruno e salvia pan for a little dirty dancing. In a frying pan, I burnt the butter (on purpose), bunged in a handful of fresh sage leaves and sizzled them until crispy. I looked in the fridge, found half a bag of fresh gnocchi and a lump of a butter and thought: “ burro bruno e salvia!” (I don’t know about you, but the hungrier I am, the more likely I am to break into impromptu Italian.) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |