Tarragon Tales

I have been nurturing tarragon for over a year since I bought my first small plant in spring. Last summer I could pick only very small amounts, but the plant I nursed then is getting much bigger this year in its earthenware pot. I've also planted three new seedlings directly into the garden bed and they are doing well. Hopefully I will have a bed of tarragon one summer soon.

The plant dies completely away in winter. As autumn comes in and the cold weather begins to accumulate the plant is reduced to sparse sticks with fewer and fewer of shiny green leaves. Then it disappears. This tendency to disappear caused Mark Crick to portray the herb as an 'aristocrat' in his very amusing book The Household Tips of the Great Writers (Granta Books, 2012).

In that book tarragon appears in his parody of Pride and Prejudice. The herb is likened to the aristocrats from Netherfield who disappear to more pleasant climes, Bath perhaps, in the winter months, leaving the poor Barrett girls and their mother bereft in their hopes of finding suitable marriage partners. When it does show up,the herb is praised for its sublime flavours, much loved by cooks, and Crick suggests poached eggs with fresh tarragon as a nice dish. I agree. Eggs poached or boiled and scattered with tarragon are lovely.

I took the recipe one step further  to produce Eggs with tomatoes and tarragon.

Thus: cook up a thick tomato sauce with onions, garlic and tomatoes. You could save a small quantity from any tomato sauce you make for pasta and so on.
Put three or four tablespoons of your thick tomato sauce into a wide pan (I use a frying pan) and heat it through without drying it out.
Create a space in the middle of the sauce and break an egg into it. Continue heating slowly until the egg is cooked to your liking. When almost cooked sprinkle the egg with finely chopped tarragon leaves.

Serve on hot buttered toast.