An abundance of fresh tarragon? I got you!

A lush chicken dish and a bracing sherbet make the most of this beautiful herb.

A perennial herb with an elegant punch

Though a wide variety of individually packaged, fresh herbs are sold at most supermarkets (with basil, sold in plant form, being the most popular), for decades I've grown all my own outdoors, annually spending a fortune on parsley, basil, chervil and thyme. Thank heavens for the perennial chives, sage and tarragon that pop up in my herb garden on their own.

I use chives everywhere, and sage is reserved for baked Italian beans, meat marinades and special dishes like Thanksgiving turkey stuffing. I stopped growing summer savory because, let's be honest, it tastes like soap. I abandoned oregano because in its fresh form it isn't as flavourful as dried. Sorrel, beautiful sorrel, was surely put on this planet to make salmon look good and soup taste summery. But after its original flourish in early spring, it bolts and turns into the ugliest plant in the herb garden. As for mint, that's a given (Moroccan mint—always grow it in a pot because it's a notorious spreader), and now I've included lemon balm to flavour iced tea and make tisane. As for lavender, I love it in recipes from roast lamb to ice cream, but my lavender patch dried up last year, so I'll have to find a new spot to get it going again.

Tarragon has always been my favourite herb. Like many, that love affair began with béarnaise, that buttery shallot and vinegar-based sauce that I'll serve on anything from poached eggs to steamed asparagus to grilled côte de boeuf.

But that tarragon (French tarragon to be specific) doesn't get used half as much as it should. It’s beautiful anise/licorice flavour works well in salads, sauces and even desserts, where it makes for a lovely accompaniment mixed into berries or even as an original sorbet to pair with fruit or serve mid-meal as a palate cleanser, a.k.a. trou normand. Herbs with fruit is hardly new: baked apples with rosemary is a treat, and poached peaches with thyme is a favourite too.

When I need to rely on supermarket herbs, I’m always careful to wash them. I still recall an outbreak of shigellosis food poisoning in Canada and the United States that was traced to bacteria found on unwashed Mexican parsley. Your own garden herbs are the only plants you might choose not to clean, but even they tend to get sandy.

Now is the best time to cook with herbs. They're mature, and they're everywhere—from the corner store to the open-air markets (or maybe your own garden). Before I cook with my herbs, I crush a few leaves in my hand to gauge their potency. This time of year, the tarragon is begging to strut its stuff. Here are two fun recipes for making the most of it:

First up, a chicken stew.

Years ago a neighbour came over with bag filled with fresh tarragon and a recipe for chicken with tarragon. I held on to it for years but sadly, never made it and now, of course, I can’t find it! But what I did find was this fun recipe for tarragon chicken from of all people, the late Jackie Kennedy. I adapted it to bring it into the 21st century, and I gotta say, though it’s not the most summery dish, it’s a definite winner. I served it with rice alongside as well as grilled zucchini topped with plenty of olive oil and chopped garden herbs. Yum!

As for the second, I love tarragon used to flavour sorbet, which in the case of the following recipe, is a sherbet really because it’s made with a bit of milk. I adore this with sautéed fruit, but even a few sliced strawberries brings ou that wonderful fresh and bracing flavour of the tarragon.

Tarragon chicken…yum!

Jackie Kennedy’s Tarragon Chicken

Serves 4