Super for Salads and Sauces (Chives)

Member Name: queen_rain

Product:	Chives
Date:	23/01/05 (198 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fresh mild flavour, Easy to grow, Prolific

Disadvantages: doesn't cook well, doesn't dry well

Chives is one of my favourite herbs because of its fresh flavour, and because it's so easy to use. I like foodstuffs which don't require cooking.

HOW TO EAT IT

I simply pick some chives from my herb garden or my window sill, chop it up with a knive, and sprinkle it generously on top of just about anything (except on chocolate mousse).

Fresh chives tastes great with tomato salad, potato salad, mixed salad - well, any salad, really - and it adds a certain something to sandwiches. When I was a child in Germany, my mother made chives sandwiches, and I quickly learned to make them too: Spread a slice of bread with butter, half it, put lots of chopped chive on one half, put the other half on top, ready. This tastes particularly nice if the sandwich is served cool from the fridge.

Dilute a stock cube in boiling water, add a handful of chopped chives, and you have a delicious simple soup. For something more filling with extra protein, stir an egg into the soup.

It is best, however, not to cook the chives, or it will lose much of its flavour and consistency. Instead, sprinkle it on top of whatever you've cooked, just before you take remove the saucepan from the heat, or just before serving.

I remember that my mother often placed a small bowl of chopped chives on the table, so that everyone could help themselves to however much they wanted with their food.

Another popular southern German use of chives is Kraeuterquark, that is, quark blended with herbs (usually finely chopped parsley and chives). This is served with boiled young potatoes in their skin, and the traditional drink to go with it is a glass of ice cold milk. Delicious! Unfortunately, quark (a dairy dish) is virtually unknown here, but you can use natural yoghurt or sour cream instead.

Chives can be dried for storage, but I don't recommend it, because dried chives doesn't look or taste good. However, it freezes well.


HOW TO GROW IT

Although I'm a keen gardener and love growing plants from seeds, I find chives (Allium Schoenoprasum) tricky to grow. It's much easier to buy the plants. But I don't purchase them from a garden centre or plant nursery, where I've seen them priced £2.50 for a measly plant.


This is my secret how to buy chives plants really cheap:

I buy my plants from the fresh produce section of a big supermarket! You may not believe that the plants stored under the fluorescent lights there are healthy, but in my experience, they're better than those from the specialist shops. Much cheaper, too - I've bought them for as little as 50pence a pot on special offer.

However, supermarket herbs are grown in very little soil, because they're meant for quick consumption rather than for a long life, so it is important that you give them nourishment.
Put the plant pot in a bowl full of water, and let the soil soak up the water. Then slap the bottom of the pot to get the plant out. What looks like one plant is really several... perhaps dozens.

Divide them carefully, putting them into flowerpots with multi-purpose compost, one or several per pot. Firm the soil, and place them on a windowsill. Many of the plants will die (that's normal, they're exhausted from the move), but some will survive, and these will grow into rich, full plants.

Chives also grows well in the garden, especially if you give it a place in the sun. If it likes the spot you've chosen, it will come up year after year, for decades.

In my former garden, a number of chives plants grew between paving slates and a greenhouse. They had barely any space to grow, and hardly any soil to feed from. Very little rain ever reached the spot, and on top of it all, people trod on the plant. Guess what? It thrived. It (or its grandparents) had thrived in that spot for decades, although at least one owner of the garden had tried to eradicate it with weedkiller.

By comparison, the plants that I had put into the choice spot in the garden, nurtured and cared for, following all the textbook instructions about compost, mulch, watering, the right amount of everything... they struggled on through the summer, died down in autumn, and were never seen again.

Currently, I'm growing chives (from supermarket-bought plants) in wall baskets placed at a convenient harvesting height, and they're doing well. I pick them even now in winter.

Once the chives plants are established, they can be harvested. Simply take a pair of scissors or a sharp knife and cut the stalks. The more often you cut them, the quicker they will re-grow.

Some books claim that you have to cut the purple flowerheads before they develop, or the stalks will turn bitter. In my experience, this is simply not true. Besides, the flowers are edible as well. They make a juicy addition to a tossed salad, or a pretty edible garnish.

A related plant worth growing is Garlic Chives, which has the combined flavours of (mild) garlic and chives.

A footnote for the linguists among you: Chives in German is 'Schnittlauch' (cut leeks) - try to pronounce that :-D

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