Bridge the gap between winter and summer herbs with salad burnet. The tender, scalloped leaves of this perennial plant offer a mild tang plus crisp cucumber flavor.
Use it: Toss those lacy leaves whole into salads. Chop them into soups or use them as part of a sprightly spread for tea sandwiches or crackers. Salad burnet makes an attractive garnish for fish and an unexpected accent for lemonade.
Find it: Maude’s Market, 4219 Virginia Ave., St. Louis, 314.353.4219
In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese and salad burnet. Set aside.
Use a potato peeler to peel the skin on the cucumber, leaving alternating rows of unpeeled sections, and cut into very thin circular slices.
Spread 1 tablespoon of herbed cream cheese on each of 4 slices of bread. Top each slice with approximately 12 cucumber wheels, overlapping them where necessary. Top each sandwich with a second slice of bread, trim the crust off the sandwiches, then cut each diagonally in half to form two triangle-shaped wedges.
Serve two halves per plate.
3 tsp. salad burnet, finely chopped
½ English cucumber
8 slices white bread
This article appears in June 2011.