Tarragon – Weird & Tasty

I love the word tarragon. If I ever have a pet it’s gonna be called after this wacky herb. What I also love about it is the description given on many cookery blogs: ‘tarragon tastes like a cross between liquorice/aniseed and vanilla’. Often, this is followed by a clear warning: ‘use sparingly’. Until recently, I had only come across tarragon at work in its bland freeze-dried form in which it strongly resembles woodruff flavour (in case you know what woodruff taste like – i just happen to come from a woodruff crazy family). I found out that it tastes great in salad dressings. So until last week, exploration of tarragon in its fresh state was hampered by a lack of tarragon in the reduced to clear pile and the thought ‘how am I going to use ALL of that?!’.

Then the opportunity presented itself to make a big vegetable casserole. On the market I found some good peppers, so I thought: wait a moment – can’t I use the elusive tarragon in this….? And so I bought some. Back home, I skimmed the weird world web for vegetarian recipes using tarragon. I did not exactly have a high turnout. Some recipes even warned (!) of using tarragon other than with certain French meat or salad recipes. How odd I thought. I decided to start experimenting ‘tout de suite’ to remedy this situation. And I have to say, my Tarragon Hot Pot was the best casserole I’ve ever made! What did I put in it? Lots of boring old stuff really, but somehow it got magically transformed into great tastiness…

Oil
Onions
Garlic
Lots and lots of red peppers plus one green, one yellow pepper
Other vegetables, e.g. carrots, courgettes, mushrooms
A tin of borlotti beans (I think)
Tomato puree, tin tomatoes
Veggie mince
Salt, pepper
bayleaves, juniper berries
A bit of chilli
Lots of fresh tarragon!

I made the casserole the night before, so that the flavour can unfold. The next day I added more tarragon, heated the whole thing gently and served it with buttered brown pilau rice and some sort of eastern style coleslaw. It was very a very intense flavour experience!