Green Dip

If you are lucky enough to live further from the Arctic tundra, or have a better grasp of horticulture, this dip is a lovely way to use up some herbs.
By Jess Lacey

This post would perhaps be better entitled the triumph of hope over experience. It is mid-March and snow is whirling outside my window. This morning Rene Redzepi tweeted a picture of snow covered patio chairs and announced spring had come to Copenhagen. Up in Aarhus we are on snow warnings so severe there are threats that schools and businesses will close (I did not think an actual snow day was possible in Denmark). And yet, despite this, I have just bought a basil plant. For my herb garden. The herb garden I have been attempting to cultivate on my window sill. Through a Scandinavian winter. Let that sink in for a minute…

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This will be my fourth basil plant. I am currently nursing the fifth mint, third thyme, and god only knows what parsley. I have come to accept that dill will be an unrequited love. I have a valiant, tragic, moribund tarragon plant languishing in the corner like a consumptive Belle Époque heroine. It was the only plant waiting for me after a weeks holiday in Holland, and now in the last throes of winter, it is giving up the ghost. I like to think of my herb garden as the triumph of hope over experience, but more likely it is just undeniable evidence that I am an absolute eejit. If you are lucky enough to live further from the Arctic tundra, or have a better grasp of horticulture, this dip is a lovely way to use up some herbs.