Who doesn’t love an elegant feathering of chives on their plate? Who doesn’t dream of chopped-up, mild-mannered, green love in their scrambled eggs?
It is one of my favorites, this Allium Schoenoprasum—not that I can pronounce the name, of course. It cuddles up to dishes like the rest of its family of onions, garlic, leeks, and shallots—but retains a delicacy about it that its siblings lack. This herb is elegant. My catering friend is so enamored of them that she gets misty-eyed when she arranges them on platters for garnish. She gets all pie-eyed as she crisscrosses them, lines them up like sentinels marching along a path of peas, or makes a funky grid with them. I think she would serve plates of chives, alone—if I would let her, which I don’t.
The very first documented case of chive-itis came from the East: the Chinese, in 3000 BC. The herb made its legendary way to Europe with Marco Polo. True to form, the Romans promptly thought up all sorts of efficient ways for using chives: fortune-telling, warding off evil spirits (a precursor to the vampire-slaying garlic, perhaps?), and providing relief from myriad terrible diseases (such as sunburn), to name but a few.
These days we just love them for their taste.
Chives are pretty easy to grow, and send up tender, hollow spires of leaves, in grassy clusters. All of the onion-y flavor of the plant is found in these leaves (unlike the more bulbous members of its botanical family). The little lavender flower-poms that grace the tops of chive plants make gorgeous and edible garnishes, as well.
Even the most plant-murdering among us can manage to grow chives indoors.
What you’ll need:
- A pot
- Some good, rich, loam soil
- A chive plant (If you start from seeds it’ll take a looooooong time to grow. Why wait? Bum one off a friend, or go to a garden center.)
- A sunny windowsill (I have read that they can survive with very little sun, so take heart, New Yorkers and Seattelites!)
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