A bowl of summer cold noodles always carries a pinch of green fragrance, and that is basil: leaves glossy, pinch one between your fingers and the pungent scent hits the nose at once. It grows fast—pick one round, and in a few days another is up.

The Green Pinch on Summer Cold Noodles

When summer cold noodles are brought out, a pinch of fine green shreds often rests on top; lift your chopsticks to mix and the pungent scent rises—that is basil. The leaves are glossy, opposite, and entire-edged; pinch one with a fingernail and the fingers stay fragrant for a long while.

It grows fast: pick one round, and in a few days another is up. A single pot on the balcony feeds the whole family, growing bushier with each picking; leave it alone and it runs to thin, sparse branches.

— Botany Notes, self-inscription —

A leaf of green fragrance can wake the palate,

and when picked it still carries the smoke of the stove.

Lanxiang and Nine-Story Tower

Basil was anciently called “lanxiang” (orchid fragrance); its cultivation was already written in the Qimin Yaoshu, making it an old Central Plains spice. In the south and in Southeast Asia it is called “nine-story tower,” because the inflorescences stack up layer on layer like a little tower built of several floors.

One and the same species has walked two food paths: northward, the refinement of a spice; southward, the intensity bound up with three-cup chicken and stir-fried clams. A plant’s two personalities are both fixed by the stove.

Use in the Kitchen

It is best used fresh: chopped fine into cold dishes, noodles, and tofu, the scent arrives directly. Long cooking in a hot pot scatters the fragrance, which is why so many recipes ask for it last—even added after the flame is off.

In Western cooking it is a main ingredient of pesto: ground with pine nuts, olive oil, and cheese to dress pasta and spread on bread. Each place eats it its own way; the plant itself says nothing—it is the eaters who speak for it.

• How to know it: Annual herb; stems square; leaves ovate, opposite, entire and glossy; verticillate cymes white or pale purple, blooming July to September.
• Season: Sow spring and summer; thrives summer to autumn; pinch out flower buds as they appear to prolong the leaf harvest.
• Caution: Loves warmth, fears cold, dies at frost; wash well before eating raw; avoid long cooking to keep the scent.

How to Grow It Bushy

Basil likes warmth and light and fears cold; frost ends it. Sow seed directly and it sprouts quickly; when it reaches five or six true leaves, pinch off the tip, and the axillary buds below branch out—the more you top it, the more branches it makes.

It is also the friendliest companion in the vegetable patch: planted beside tomatoes, one shades and one draws pests, each at its ease. The kitchen herbs you use are most practical a few steps from the door.

◆ ◆ ◆

Keywords: basil · nine-story tower · table herb · balcony pot