Cilantro



a small cilantro plant

 One of my favourite garden plants is cilantro.  It self-seeds freely and is one of the earliest volunteers up in the garden in spring.  Even the tiniest plants are full of flavour, so I add it to nearly every salad I make.  I don't cut the leaves, I pull out whole plants, otherwise, my garden would be one big cilantro patch.

When the plants get too big, I pull most of them so they don't crowd out the other vegetables.  If we could freeze them, they would retain their taste better, but we dry some instead.  In the winter, we can crumble them into soups, but they will be much more bland than frozen ones would have been.  I leave a few plants growing, for seeds.


the cilantro patch

When the seed pods are bright green, I pickle them for a wonderful addition to rice, stir-fry, hors d'oeuvres, fish dishes, etc.  I've never known anyone else to do this, but they should; these are so delicious.  I leave some seeds to dry into coriander.  After picking most of them, I pull the dry plants and shake them around to scatter next year's seeds.



ready to be dried