Fresh Herbs & Leaves

Dried curry leaves are not curry leaves. The fresh leaf goes into hot oil at the start of a tempering, spits for a few seconds and perfumes the whole pan, and nothing in a jar reproduces it. The same goes for pandan, which gives Sri Lankan rice and curry its background scent, and for coriander, whose stalks carry as much flavour as the leaves and should go in with them.

Using them properly

Hardy leaves like curry leaf and pandan want heat and go in early, whole, so they can be fished out or eaten around. Soft herbs like coriander and mint go in at the end or raw, since heat flattens them within a minute. Mint belongs in chutney, raita and a good deal of Sri Lankan and Hyderabadi cooking; fenugreek leaves are closer to a vegetable than a herb and cook down like spinach with a bitterness that is the point of them.

Keeping them alive

Bunched herbs last longest wrapped loosely in a damp cloth or paper in the fridge, not sealed in plastic where they sweat and rot. Curry leaves keep on the stalk; strip them as you cook. Anything that has gone limp will usually come back after twenty minutes standing in cold water.

The tempering they go into starts with the mustard seed and dried chilli in spices and masalas, and the oil in oils and ghee.