Spignel ✦

Cistre

What it is

On the Mézenc plateau the herb is fed to cattle before it ever reaches a cook: graziers count cistre in the hay because it carries through into the milk, the butter and the fat of the beef. The leaf tastes of aniseed and curry at the same time, while the root goes the other way, closer to peppered celeriac.

In the kitchen

Add the feathery leaf off the heat — a minute at a boil and the anise goes flat. The root wants the opposite: twenty minutes in a broth before it gives anything up.

Goes with

Butter Potato Trout Cream Leek Cantal Aubrac beef

In season alongside

Purple basil Angelica Basil Curry plant Hoja santa Kkaennip (Korean perilla leaf)

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us