Fried Leaves

Fried leaves? You mean spinach or, um, silverbeet or, um, bok choy? Like, a stir-fry?

No. Fried leaves. Borage leaves. Fried as fritters. No kidding. They are completely delicious!

Borage Fritters

“Borage is usually classed as a herb. It is a hairy plant with thick, pale green leaves and small blue, star-shaped flowers. Both leaves and flowers are edible and taste of cucumber. The hairiness on the leaves disappears when they are cooked. You will probably not be able to buy borage but it is very easy to grow.”

    * 12-16 medium-sized borage leaves (3-4 per person)

    * 60 g fine wholemeal or wheatmeal flour

    * 1 egg  * 2 tablespoons milk

    * 1 dessertspoon oil plus 2 tablespoons oil for frying.

Optional: * 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. If the borage leaves need cleaning wash them and pat them dry gently.

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl.

2. Whisk the egg and stir it into the flour.

3. Add the dessertspoon oil and the milk to the flour mixture and beat until smooth.

4. Heat about 2 tablespoons oil to medium in a frying pan or electric frypan.

5. Hold the borage leaves by the stalk end and dip them into the batter one at a time, coating well.

6. Fry them in the oil a few at a time until golden on both sides, turning once.

6. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.

–Serves 4.

Source: Rosemary Hemphill. Herbs For All Seasons. Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1972

    Back in the 1970s British cookery, and in its wake Australasian, began to shake off the shackles of the meat and three veg tradition, not to mention those of the cordon bleu tradition, and became aware of healthier foodstuffs, such as pulses, grains, yoghurt and fresh herbs. And of cuisines outside the borders of Britain which did different things with herbs, spices, and vegetables, often combining them in ways which were quite new to this audience. During this period and into the 1980s we got a spate of new-wave cookbooks telling us how to use the strange herbs and spices which up until then had been merely names to us—and often, not even that!

    Rosemary Hemphill’s Herbs for all Seasons from 1972 is typical. Full of information, plus helpful recipes, but no coloured illustrations like we’d expect today—this was a bit early for them: the publishing industry at that stage was pleading poverty.

    In the early 1980s when I was living in Wellington, New Zealand, my block of three flats had quite a large area of rock-hard lawn, with the remnants of a vegetable garden down the back which some optimist had planted up in the past. Unfortunately this veggie plot got very little sun, as the trees behind it shaded it too much, and nothing did well in it. So when I discovered a place selling herb seeds by mail order (before the Internet, yes), I didn’t try planting them down there, but tried a strip against the sunniest wall of my flat. The ground was pretty well rock-hard there, too, but I persevered. Several of the unusual herbs I raised did very well: the salad burnet, bergamot and borage in particular flourished.

    So I tried—sceptically, but nevertheless—Rosemary Hemphill’s borage fritters. Oh, boy! The fuzzy hairs on the bigger leaves disappeared in the cooking, the batter was light and crisp—and I have to admit I don’t usually have much success with batters—and the taste was incredibly delicate. Mmm… Fried leaves! Yum!

A very old European herb

Borage (Borago officinalis) is a very old European herb. It is native to the Mediterranean area and “was planted in Roman gardens for its flowers and attraction for honeybees. Pliny the Elder called the plant Euphrosinum (merriment) thanks to its ability to drive away depression. Borage was an ingredient in Pimm’s liqueur, until it was replaced with mint. It is still used as a garnish for the Pimm’s cup cocktail. In Poland, borage leaves are utilized as a pickling spice; Italians use them as a ravioli stuffing. Today, it is prescribed as an anti-inflammatory and helps regulate metabolism and hormonal imbalance.” Desiree Zenowich. “Discover the Ancient and Modern Uses of the Plants in the Getty Villa Herb Garden”. Getty Iris blog, May 26, 2020).

    It’s one of those herbs that used to be much more widely used in Europe than it is today. British contributors to the online collection of extant British folk knowledge of plants, Plant-Lore, write: “it makes cucumber more digestible” (August 2015); and “I was told in Vence, Provence, France, near the Italian border, that the older people (or in former times) used borage for fritters” (June 2019)—chalk one up to Rosemary Hemphill for rediscovering this!

If we see borage today it’s probably only the little blue flowers, which the trendy chefs use as decoration on their much-handled little piles of lukewarm unidentifiable substances. The flowers are edible, yes, though I’d love to see the results of a survey of just how many customers do eat them. Like the leaves, they are very mild and taste, as Rosemary Hemphill tells us, of cucumber.

    Borage barely makes an appearance in the English-language cookbooks, but here’s a New Zealand recipe for a herb tea using the flowers, dating from the same period of the resurgence of interest in herbs as Rosemary Hemphill’s book:

Borage Tea

“Borage was used for many centuries because of its ‘gladdening effects’ in the making of cordials and refreshing drinks.”

To make Borage Tea use a teaspoonful of dried borage flowers to a pint of boiling water. Allow to stand for 10 minutes, then strain and sweeten with sugar or honey.

Source: Jeffrey Thomas. Drinks For a Southern Summer: A New Zealand Recipe Book. Wellington, N.Z., Port Nicholson Press, 1981

    The leaves are still used as a vegetable in some places in Europe, as the quote from the Getty Iris blog indicates. In Spain they are a specialty of Aragón; this next, rather sketchy recipe is from the big official Spanish tourist site. Here the borage leaves seem to be simply boiled; but the notes to the picture I found indicate that they can be lightly sauteed in olive oil with garlic, which I think would be preferable. Whichever way they are done, the hairs will vanish in the cooking, as with nettles.

Borage with Potatoes

    * 2 kg of borage  * 3 potatoes  * 1/2 l [500 ml] of water

    * 1 small glass of olive oil  * Salt

Clean the borage, peel the potatoes and cut them into pieces. Season them and cook for 20 minutes. Drain the borage and the potatoes and dress with pure olive oil.

 –Serves 4.

Source: “Food and Wine tourism, Info.spain,

https://www.spain.info/en/recipe/borage-and-potatoes/

It’s obviously a recipe which requires the best and freshest ingredients, straight from the garden.

    Other leaves can be fried, of course, in the same way as borage: lightly coated in batter and you eat the whole thing. Spinach and sorrel would be candidates. But the most intriguing “fried leaves” I’ve ever come across are the fried leaves of Murcia, Spain: paparajotes. They are coated with a light yeast batter, which is fried and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. But you don’t eat the actual leaves! They are lemon leaves from the local trees. All the leaf is intended to do is to flavour the crispy, sugary batter. James Rudd writes on Gastro Obscura: “Pick the leaf up by its stem and pull the batter off. That’s it. Peeling the delicious sugary skin off the leaf in one smooth go is one of the greatest pleasures of Murcian gastronomy.”

    If you’ve got a lemon tree (unsprayed, obviously) and would like to try the recipe, here are the basic instructions:

“It is important to choose the perfect leaves … Ideal candidates should be a healthy shade of light green, and neither too soft nor too hard to the touch. After that, it’s a matter of making a batter (typically consisting of milk, eggs, flour, and a bit of yeast), coating your chosen leaf, frying it in olive oil, then dusting with sugar and cinnamon.”

Source: James Rudd. “Paparajotes”. Gastro Obscura, [sourced 13 Dec 2018],

https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/paparajotes-murcia-spain