My allotment neighbour has given me a huge bunch of lovage which she said can be used to flavour soups & stews, how can I preserve it ? I know you can freeze herbs. How much would you use at a time, and has anyone ever cooked the stalks?
Just a thought - if you slow dry celery leaves, you can powder with salt as a useful additive.
Use? Less than you think. Say 2 leaves in a gallon of soup?
Stalks? Why bother?
I know that you can candy lovage, but just checked my Culinary Herbs FAQ and came up with this....
Lovage overdose -> nausea
From Chrissie Wildwood:
Ignoring my common sense, I followed the advice given in one of my herbal cook books - that is, to use lovage 'like spinach'. This implies that the herb is safe to use in quantity. So I used four stems of fresh lovage leaf, mixed with a much larger proportion of spinach, and used this as a basis for a cheese flan. Even though the flan tasted delicious, less than an hour later we (myself, partner and a friend) began to feel nauseous. I sensed lovage was the culprit. Fortunately, I had some peppermint oil tablets available. We chewed two tablets each and this quelled the nausea within a few minutes.
The herb's emetic side-effect is largely overlooked. Indeed, only one reference book in my vast herbal library offers a warning against over use of lovage: 'The Illustrated Book of Herbs, Their Medicinal and Culinary Uses', by Jiri Stodola and Jan Volak, published by Octopus, 1984 (a translation from the Czech). Here we are warned: 'If taken internally in excess, lovage may cause nausea and vertigo.'
But what constitutes an 'excessive' dose? Undoubtedly, four leafy stems shared between three adults (even though cooked for an hour in a pastry case with spinach, beaten egg, cream and cheese) can make you feel very queasy. Thankfully we didn't experience vertigo as well.
So do remember that, however you preserve it, a little goes a v.v.long way!
Thanks for the info, I would have probably used far more than that. I have frozen big handfuls in water thinking 'chuck a bag of leaves in some soup'. That would have been interesting. Anyway, makes me wonder why we eat it then if it's so dodgy. My allotment neighbour said she puts the leaves in salad, and cooks the stalks to serve with a sauce. Must have the constitution of an ox!
i dry it as well, crumble it into a glass jar and use to flavour, about the same as other herbs i add to soups and stews.
it works as a flavour enhancer like monosodiumglutamate - but it's all natural.