Rosemary salt

When I took a break from unpacking boxes long enough to take a look at the garden of our new house, I was thrilled to discover that we are caretaking a large and flourishing rosemary bush. Rosemary seems to grow prolifically in Canberra; I’ve seen varieties that grow so big that people use them as hedges. Ours isn’t quite that impressive, but it’s definitely more than enough for my needs, and has prompted me to begin rebuilding my stash of flavored salts and sugars.

Rosemary salt is about as easy a recipe as you can find: pick some fresh rosemary, strip the needles off the stems, chop them up as finely as you can, and mix into at least double the quantity of salt. Then leave easily accessible, for adding to all sorts of things. I mentioned stirring a large pinch into my experimental cumquat curd; here are a few other things that come to mind:

-      savory cheddar oatmeal

-      disruptive bolognese sauce

-      roast chicken

-      breakfast sandwiches

-      orange soup

 

You may notice, in looking at this picture, that there’s a patch of mint flourishing alongside the rosemary – what you can see is about one-quarter of what’s there. I’m thinking mint sugar, or maybe mint simple syrup, for my next experiment.