Tarragon.

The pungent, aniseed-perfumed herb that is not backward in coming forward.

Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on tarragon: the pungent, slightly polarising herb that arrived late in my kitchen.

For paid subscribers click here for my recipes for Chicken and Grape Salad with Almonds and Tarragon, and my recipe for Roast Rhubarb with Tarragon.

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Tarragon did not arrive in my kitchen until I was twenty eight (for context, I say goodbye to my twenties next month). That distinctive aniseed flavour is why it never appeared in my parents kitchen growing up; none of us really like aniseed that much, but in tarragon, experimenting in my own kitchen (that is the beauty sometimes of working as a recipe developer for hire, I learn to love things I’d not otherwise have tried) I’ve discovered something to crave in the delicate perfume it imbues when stuffed into the cavity of a roast chicken, the slight pungency it adds to a scattering of fine herbes, and the little extra something it contributes to one of our favourite things to eat with the aforementioned tarragon (and lemon) stuffed bird: Creamed Leeks.

Tarragon is a soft herb whose soft leaves cling to an improbably tough stem in a way that for some reason reminds me of the sprigs of curry leaves I’ve started buying since diving nose first into Sri Lankan cooking. It loves cream, chicken and eggs; even before I realised how much I loved tarragon, I knew it was essential to my all time favourite steak accompaniment: bearnaise sauce. The French love it, also often trotting it out in a compound butter, and probably because that is how I first started cooking it, tarragon to me is a very present flavour in German cooking.

In her brilliant and in my mind essential book Strudel, Noodles & Dumplings food writer Anja Dunk in her chapter on German flavours reminds us that:

Unlike me, tarragon is not shy… for such a unique-tasting herb, though, it marries well with so many things. In Germany it is used often with asparagus, courgettes, artichokes, tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms and cucumbers… Tarragon and butter are like magnets, finding it hard to stay away from each other in our kitchen - a simple mixture of chopped tarragon and butter is glorious with charred steak or barbecue chicken. Grapes and tarragon is a heavenly combination that goes particularly well with chicken. Fish, especially the oily type such as herring and mackerel, love tarragon too.

What follows this worthy introduction is a recipe for Butter Baked Tomatoes with Tarragon and Cream which I think has to be held up as one of the best side dishes I’ve made this year and which I think - along with her paprika butter pork chops - is reason enough alone to buy the book. I’ve also got a bottle of her tarragon and pink peppercorn-infused white wine vinegar on the counter I made for the tomatoes but which I’ve also been enjoying in salad dressings, and in my own take on bearnaise below whose twist it helped inspire.

My Chicken and Grape Salad with Almonds and Tarragon I’ve got for you this month also leans heavily on Anja’s recipes for inspiration: it is what happened when I made her salad, and then wanted to make it again, realising it would make an even better lunch with some of the excellent chicken leftover from a roasted Piper’s Farm bird I had in the fridge.

Tarragon is rather good in a salad; I’m now also remembering a fantastic barbecued courgette number I made last summer griddling my parents wonderfully sweet home grown yellow courgettes over charcoal before drenching them in a lyok dressing from Olia Hercules’ Summer Kitchens where it as is essential to the herb mix as Ukraine’s beloved dill, and everyone’s favourite handful of parsley.

Tarragon was also a flavour that kept popping up in Croatia; it appeared alongside basil garnishing my crisp polenta-topped fishermans stew in a wild-cat infested square (but in a charming way) in Old Town Dubrovnik, and infused oil garnished the raw scallops with kholrabi cream I had at Restaurant 360, otherwise known as the best thing I ate at one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to.

But it was in the little corner supermarket we visited to buy water and milk for our apartment on the first morning where I found tarragon most unexpectedly: not fresh, but it’s translation - estragon - adorning a tomato puree-like tube.

Sadly, I’m not a fan of the mustard, it turns out, held within which is both rather bitter, and does not seem to taste anything like tarragon.

And whilst I don’t really do much Iranian cooking as with my heritage my Middle Eastern cooking tends to lean more into the Israeli, I do know that tarragon also often appears prominently as part of the regions raw vegetable and herb platters, and that tarragon also often flavours Persian pickled cucumbers.

I know I’ve already touched on this months recipes above, but I’ve also totally ignored breakfast / dessert, turning to yet another cookbook for inspiration, Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh’s Sweet. The chilled vanilla rice pudding it is paired with does not really work for us - we love a good baked rice pudding but J has a horror of it cold - but the forced rhubarb that is finally starting to appear in farm shops down from the Yorkshire rhubarb triangle roasted with tarragon? That is an ingredient pairing I’m keeping hold of.

Also, a little treat for free subscribers: one of this months usually paywalled three recipes featuring tarragon is free for all to enjoy, below. Valentine’s Day is coming up and whilst this year elsewhere I’ve been encouraging people to cook pork steaks instead, I know a large majority of people (us included) will be making a classic steak dinner so I thought it would be remiss of me not to make the bearnaise free for all. Don’t worry paid subscribers, I’ve got a few more recipes planned later in the year to make up for it! Also, have you considered giving an ingredient subscription as a Valentine’s gift?

Bearnaise-ish Sauce for Steak

Serves: 2 generously, Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 20 minutes

I’d never been happy with any of the Bearnaise sauce recipes I’d tried for this classic egg yolk and butter emulsion sauce enriched with white wine, shallots, peppercorns and fresh tarragon until I threw all of the classical methods out of the window.

This is not how you make a Bearnaise sauce. People who have been to culinary school or who have trained in French kitchens will no doubt be hunting for the unsubscribe button as they read, but do you know what? Good riddance because now I’ll never made a Bearnaise any other way, and I think those of you who have been as un-satisfied as me with their at home efforts deserve to try it. Here we have no messing around with double boilers, the yolk won’t overcook and the sauce won’t split. It is well seasoned, rich and spoonable, thickening slightly as it cools if you don’t enjoy it warm as we do. It also tastes much better than almost every Bearnaise I’ve ever been presented in a pub or a steakhouse, plus it only serves 2 not 12 like many online recipes, so I’m just going to run with it.¹

• 1/2 banana shallot

• 6 tarragon sprigs

• 5 pink peppercorns

• 4 tbsp white wine

• 1 tbsp white wine or tarragon vinegar

• 1 large egg yolk

• 100g unsalted butter

• sea salt, to taste

1. Peel and thinly slice the shallot and combine it in a small saucepan with 3 of the tarragon sprigs, the peppercorns, white wine and vinegar. Set over a medium heat and allow to infuse for 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, melt 80g of the butter, cutting the remaining 20g into cubes, and finely chop the remaining tarragon leaves.

3. Place the yolk in the bottom of a small food processor or blender with the facility to pour liquid inside with the motor running, or a cup in which you can fit a stick blender.

4. Strain the vinegar mixture and gradually blitz it into the egg yolk to make a smooth liquid with a good pinch of salt.

5. Slowly pour the butter into the still blitzing liquid to make a thin-ish, buttery sauce.

6. Wipe out the pan you used to infuse the liquid and return the egg and butter sauce to it. Set it over a medium low heat, whisking often until it has thickened to just slightly thinner than a spooning consistency where you should be able to draw a line in the sauce when it coats the back of the spoon.

7. Remove the pan from the heat and gradually whisk in the cold butter. Add the chopped tarragon and season to taste with more salt before setting it aside to cool and thicken a little more whilst you cook and rest the steaks.

1. Leftovers are also good at room temperature and then spread on hot toast.