Like wild garlic, lemongrass, pink pepper and rocket, coriander is currently enjoying something of a renaissance. The very intensive taste of the fresh leaves adds a distinctive flavour to pea soups, scampi, chicken breast fillets, spicy curries, dishes based on quark (a soft, unripened cheese with the texture and flavour of sour cream) and mashed potatoes. For thousands of years, coriander (Coriandrum sativum) – an annual umbellifer with white flowers that grows to between 30 and 60 cm in height – has enhanced the cuisines of Asia, North Africa and Europe. Leaf coriander should always be used fresh and not be cooked, as heat very quickly diminishes its aroma. While the leaves are not suitable for drying or freezing, coriander’s finely chopped stalks can be eaten – Thai cooks even use the roots.

The reddish brown, globular fruit of the coriander plant have a very different taste to the leaves and stalks – much more spicy and citrusy (reminiscent of bitter oranges) and also sweeter. Coriander seeds are commonly used as a baking spice, for example in the German spiced biscuits Spekulatius, Lebkuchen (a form of gingerbread) or Schwarzbrot (dark rye or black bread), in sausage products (e.g. brawn, bratwurst, salami), for pickling vegetables, as an ingredient in stews (e.g. cabbage, turnip, game) and to flavour herbal liqueurs, gin and vermouth.

Coriander is also an important component of curry spice mixtures, including the North Indian garam masala, the South Indian sambaar podi, and also the Ethiopian spice mixture berbere. The small dried seeds should be dry fried just before use in a frying pan with no oil until they start to steam, then finely ground in a mortar. This is the best way to preserve coriander’s fine spicy aroma, as its highly concentrated essential oils evaporate very rapidly in the powdered form. So next time you’re buying spices, don’t go for ground coriander, choose the whole dried fruits instead!