Interesting thymes
Simon Courtauld
Towards the end of this month, we shall be gathering St George's mushrooms, named for the day when they are supposedly at their best — though the season usually lasts for about three weeks. We found a clutch of them last year along the riverbank, where the meadowsweet appears in June, though our usual source of supply is Salisbury Plain. (Do not ask me where to find them; the woman who told me swore me to secrecy as she picks baskets of them every year to sell to London restaurants.) These mushrooms, which cannot be confused with any other varieties of fungus because nothing else remotely similar appears at this time of year, have a very delicate flavour which is improved by the addition of herbs and/or garlic. Having experimented a bit, I would say they are best gently fried with a little garlic, cream and finely chopped thyme.
I doubt whether thyme has a stronger smell and taste in cold, wet weather. But ours, which grows thickly on the terrace, has certainly been noticeably pungent during this miserable spring, the more so now that it is showing new, paler green growth. If only it had a scent to fill your nostrils when you walked outside. A friend has given me a root of wild thyme from Provence, but I rather doubt that we shall be able to sniff it of an English summer's evening.
I was hoping to find a bank whereon the wild thyme blows when I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall last week, but most of the plants in the Warm Temperate Biome are still in their infancy (and the climate beneath those magnificent domes did not feel very warm temperate). For maximum effect I would recommend delaying a visit at least until late summer, when the cotton and tobacco, as well as the herbs, will have got going. Meanwhile, carpets of wild thyme, with their tiny pink flowers, can be found in summer on the Cornish headlands.
Thyme was considered by the Romans, and in the Middle Ages, to be an emblem of courage; ladies would hand their knights-errant a sprig of thyme as they set off on some quixotic escapade. And in the 17th century it is recorded that thyme soup, made with beer, would help to cure shyness. Thymol, distilled from the oil, was thought to have rather more useful curative properties as an antiseptic — it was added to mouthwashes and coughdrops. Thyme has also traditionally been used in the making of Benedictine and other liqueurs.
Among the scores of different varieties of this herb, the two most often found in gardens are thymus vulgaris and lemon thyme. Many of the others are unsuitable for cooking, but they are good bee plants and produce delicious honey (often found in Greece, according to one of my informants). I once came across a variety of thyme called herba barona, apparently because it was rubbed into a baron of beef. Old meat would also be 'sweetened' with a related plant, calamint, which is sometimes known as basil thyme.
If thyme is to be cut and dried, it should be harvested around July, before flowering is over; but I have never bothered, preferring to pick it fresh when required. It is of course, with bayleaf and parsley, one of the trio of herbs making up a bouquet garni, and all the books tell you to add thyme to stews and casseroles. No doubt this is a good idea, but I wonder how many people, when eating a stew of lamb and root vegetables, would be able to say whether it had been cooked with a sprig or two of thyme. Better, surely, to roast the root vegetables separately, or bake them in foil, with chopped thyme — and then you will definitely taste the herb. At the weekend I tried making a sort of gratin dauphinois, with sliced turnips as well as potatoes, and lots of thyme. It went very well with roast chicken. Lucy Vickery A lemon thyme stuffing for chicken is particularly good; and I read that lemon thyme is also recommended for custards and fruit salads. However, my current favourite use for thyme is with fish. I have had it recently with a dish of clams (the Americans add thyme to clam chowder), in crab cakes, and with turbot, simply baked with a warm herb butter, using chopped thyme and chives. There is even a thymefish, better known as the grayling, whose Latin name is thymallus. But I'm not sure this is entirely relevant.
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