Sorrel

This scruffy-looking plant is my sorrel patch. Every garden should have one: the taste of sorrel is like nothing else - and I've never seen it for sale anywhere, not even in France.

In some ways it's like spinach, only with a lemony sharpness to it, and none of that Popeye'd metallic feel on your tongue. Just like spinach, it cooks down to nothing - a sludgy khaki-coloured nothing, rather than that deep rich yet bright spinach green. You can use young leaves raw in a salad to add piquancy.

It's an easy plant. Mine grow in an east-facing bed, with poor stony soil, and no attention from anybody, except harvesting. I was given two or three roots, probably in the autumn. It's a perennial plant, the sort that looks after itself, and just appears again when the days are noticeably longer, the air a little warmer. Now is a good time to sow seed, and I don't think they're particularly difficult to propagate. I should think they'd do well in a pot, although I haven't tried.

Grow it near the kitchen, so that you can easily keep picking a succession of young leaves - they appear out of the ground all summer like red spears before unfurling a shield-shaped leaf. Cookery books tend to specify "a handful", and that's because you can't buy it. Don't worry too much about quantities, but remember that however you are cooking your sorrel, one handful per person is plenty, even though it cooks right down, because even the young leaves have a strong taste.

This week our roast chicken was accompanied by a little mess of sorrel cooked in the water that clung after washing. Three or four minutes in an uncovered saucepan, keeping an eye on it, keeping it moving with a wooden spoon, cooked at the last minute whilst dishing up the rest of the meal. Next time I might stir in a little fromage frais to make a sauce. Or serve it with fish. Or add it to an omelette. Sorrel makes all of these dishes special - and keeps people guessing, since it is not well known in this country.

A real treat, even if gardening is not really your thing, although it may be if you have found this link through weekend herb blogging (this is the first time I have taken part in a blog event, so please forgive me if I've done it wrong).