First off, I apologize to those of you who can’t stand cilantro. This has got to be so hard for you, post after obsessive post touting the glories of such a controversial herb. If you feel like screaming, I understand (not really, but I’ll pretend) and give you permission to move on. I will not hold it against you (though I do feel a little sorry for you since cilantro is so obviously one of God’s more brilliant gifts to the human race).

Anyway, I think I discovered a fine and dandy way to preserve cilantro. Commenter Kris left me a simple recipe involving some of my favorite things (cilantro! lime! olive oil! garlic!), so with nary a hesitation, I set to, quadrupling the recipe (and not even hardly putting a dent in my cilantro crop).

The resulting green sauce was so deliciously tasty that I fought down an urge to guzzle the stuff. (I suppose I could have, but I was on a mission to preserve, preserve, preserve, and once on a mission, I get tunnel vision.) Instead, I blobbed some of the sauce on our suppertime nachos (and then scarfed my serving and snuck bites off my kids’ plates when they weren’t looking) and froze the rest. I thawed one of the cubes to see how well it endured the temperature drop, and while the cilantro was a little more mild, it was still plenty good, bolstered as it was by the lime and garlic.

I’m not sure what to call this mixture. It’s not exactly a pesto since there are no nuts or cheese. It could be a pistou, which is mostly is the same thing as pesto but minus the nuts (and with the cheese being optional), but I’m not French and don’t know how to pronounce pistou, nor do I care to look it up and figure it out. I want an easy, no-fuss name. Paste? Pulp? Spread? Concentrate? Shucks, nothing is jumping out at me, so I’ll be boring and just call it…

Saucy Cilantro

Kris suggests using this sauce more as a condiment than as an ingredient in hot dishes. Use it to top quesadillas, enchiladas, chicken, fish, etc. Mix it with some sour cream to dollop atop bean soups. I highly recommend using it to anoint nachos (and then, if you’re in theme mode, eat them while watching Nacho Libre). Add it to salad dressings: I mixed a thawed cube into the dressing for an Asian salad, and it added a gentle zip.

4 cups cilantro leaves and small stems, rinsed
5 cloves garlic, sliced
½ serrano pepper, seeded and sliced
½ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons lime juice

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until well-blended. Spoon the sauce into ice cube trays and freeze. Pop the frozen cubes of cilantro out of the trays and transfer them to glass jars. Label the jars and return to the freezer.

Yield: an ample pint of cubes.

About one year ago: Buttered Peas and Brown Buttered Noodles with Ham

I have a very large crop of cilantro this year and am trying to figure out the best way to preserve it. Will you help me, please?

I’ve already tried one method: blending the cilantro with olive oil and freezing it in ice cube trays, like this:

1. Remove the tough stems and rinse the leaves.

2. Stuff the cilantro in the blender.

3. Drizzle olive oil on top.

4. Blend, adding more oil as needed.

5. Divide the cilantro pulp in an ice cube tray.

6. Freeze.

7. Dump out the cubes, pack them into a glass jar, and store them in the freezer.

The only problem with this method is that the resulting cilantro tastes so mild. I added one cube to a small pot of black beans for supper last night (and who showed up at my door but my parents—oh, the irony!) but the taste was so inconsequential that I (or my parents) hardly even knew it was in there.

My sister-in-law says she just freezes the uncooked cilantro on a tray and then transfers it to a jar, pulling out a few sprigs when she needs a little, but she said that while it preserves nicely, it looses a lot of its potency.

So, do any of you have any cilantro preserving tricks? Is there a way to keep cilantro and its flavor?

In the meantime, I’m searching for more cilantro-heavy recipes. In my repertoire so far:

Peanut Noodles
Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Curried Lentils

It’s a pretty pathetic list. Any other suggestions?

About one year ago: Stirring the pot, a homeschooling mother’s (that would be me!) tirade.

Two Saturdays ago, I went crazy in the kitchen. I had spent the previous night sleeping on Shannon’s sofa (we had thought Wayne was on his way out that night, but he fooled us, hanging on for another five days) and was on edge, uneasy and uptight. (Pretty much how I felt around the very end of each of my pregnancies, but worse.) My parents showed up that morning for our planned work day, but I could focus on nothing beyond food. I bustled from counter to fridge, sink to stove, turning out a ridiculous number of new dishes, including the aforementioned ribs, totally aware that I was “nesting.” (So much of death parallels birth, I’ve discovered.)

For lunch, I made red beans, pico de gallo, guacamole, and salsa verde. It was a cilantro heavy meal, but it wasn’t till we sat down and dug in that I learned that my dad didn’t care all that much for cilantro … and neither did my mother. I’m not sure how I missed knowing that about them, though it could be that I blotted it from my mind, so horrified by their cilantro-freakish behavior that I refused to file it in my noggin.

(I’m still not sure how it’s possible that I, a cilantro lover extraordinaire, came from them, two cilantro haters. [Okay, so that’s a little strong. They both ate the food, and Mom even said that she actually enjoyed it, so they probably don’t really hate cilantro, they just don’t prefer it. But in my book, it’s pretty much the same thing. Cilantro is to be loved; any other opinions are an aberration.])

Despite my hostessing faux pas, I fully enjoyed my meal. The best part, I thought, was the salsa verde, a bright green salsa consisting of tomatillos, lime, garlic, serrano peppers, and, of course, lots of cilantro. It tickled me down to my cilantro-adoring toes.

It was my first time working with tomatillos. They had always intimidated me, what with their green hardness and mysterious papery husks.

But then I discovered Nicole’s recipe and decided it was time to grapple with my fears. So when I stopped by T and E Meats to pick up the rack of ribs, I ducked into the little Mexican market that squats in one corner of the parking lot. Clueless tomatillo shopper that I was, I snagged another customer, a Spanish speaking woman, and grilled her on the art of selecting the proper tomatillo. (They need to be firm, she said, not soft or squishy.)

The tomatillos turned out to be delightfully easy to work with. I simply pulled off the husk, rinsed the jolly green balls, and quartered them.

I tossed all the ingredients in the food processor, gave them a whirl, and, never minding that I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, I popped open a bag of tortilla chips and dug in.

I promptly commenced to moaning and sighing (much to Miss Beccaboo’s bemusement), reveling in the sharp, tangy flavors, the juice running off my fingers and dripping all over the counter.

Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Adapted from Nicole’s blog, Pinch My Salt

I used one serrano pepper and the salsa was only mildly hot; two would have been too much for the kids, but I would’ve still enjoyed it. You can, if you wish, replace the serranos with part of a jalapeño.

½ pound tomatillos, husked, rinsed, quartered
1 – 2 serrano peppers, washed, membrane and seeds removed
1 clove of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
½ cup cilantro, packed
1 – 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
½ heaping teaspoon salt

Combine all the ingredients in the canister of a food processor and pulse until finely chopped and saucy. Serve with tortilla chips.

To store, put the salsa in a tightly lidded container and keep it in the refrigerator. It will keep for at least a day, maybe longer (it didn’t hang around long enough for me to find out).

Yield: a generous cup.

About one year ago: White Chocolate and Dried Cherry Scones.