Dispatch from Perillaville, USA

keen on green (& purple)

Oct 03, 2024

May I humbly present another riveting post about leaves. While our fig tree presented an unexpected opportunity, the cultivation of perilla was very much an intentional effort. We bough two little perilla1 starts on one of our regular trips to H Mart, and a third on another trip when it seemed like one of the seedlings wouldn’t make it. Now, months later, all three plants are flourishing in — or dare I say, taking over — the corners of our raised beds.

To be clear, this isn’t a problem; I love the taste of perilla. First introduced to me in a ssam context, I find its unique herbaceous, mint / basil / anise-y flavor to be irresistible. But one can only eat so many lettuce wraps, and the yield of these plants is astronomical — right now I’m harvesting maybe 100 leaves a week? More? I’m still in a precious, waste not gardening phase (which is… good?), and I can’t bear to compost what essentially grows like a weed here, crowding out some other things as a result of my poor planting schema. Here are some notes from my adventures in finding ways to put all these perilla leaves to work — my dear Korean readers, please don’t cancel me.

Pesto

I subbed perilla for basil in a standard pesto recipe, both blanched and raw, with pretty stellar results. It’s paired well with some simple pasta dishes, dissolving some gochujang into the pasta water before emulsifying has recreated a sort of familiar flavor combination in a very different vessel. I tried a variation with rau răm (also growing like wild, please send tips) and it didn’t work out quite as well, a little bit too bright.

Sorbet

“Will it ice cream?” is one of the main ways I approach abundant producers in the garden. A sorbet or granita seemed more appropriate, so I tweaked a recipe to be a little more perilla heavy. Very tasty, I’m especially impressed with how well the texture has held up after a few days in the freezer.

Salads

Hand holding peach perilla salad, hand holding watermelon perilla salad

Tons and tons of perilla leaves are getting tossed into salads. It works especially well with rau răm and chrysanthemum greens to give a garden salad a bit of a pan-Asian vibe, which I guess is kind of a horrifying descriptor. I’m a huge sucker for a savory and sweet fruit salad, and perilla’s herbaceous quality can’t fully seem to make up its mind which way to lean; a perfect gap-bridger. Used in combination with purple shiso (which I am also drowning in), it’s gone well with ripe peaches, a little agrumato and Aleppo pepper. I’m also a sucker for an herby watermelon salad, in this case dressed with fish sauce, sesame oil/seeds, soy sauce and ginger.

Kimchi

Hand holding bowl of perilla harvest in the garden

I used a recipe from Korean Home Cooking for this quick perilla kimchi. It comes together in minutes, and is a great way to use up a full week’s harvest in one go. A delicious savory accompaniment, it also stands up quite well on its own — more than once I’ve been caught calling a mound of it on a bed of rice ‘lunch’. I’ll probably make a huge batch of this to last through the winter before cutting back the plants for the season.

perilla kimchi making process photos, kimchi after being aged a few weeks

Other applications

Hand holding focaccia with perilla, pizza with perilla

Perilla has found its way into various baking projects, both kimchi’d and raw. I’ve used it on pizza in a sort of Hawaiian preparation, and topped a garden focaccia with it (although really, it should have gone underneath the tomatoes)2. Not especially exciting, but I’ve been extending the scope of where perilla makes an appropriate garnish. Curry, steaks, noodle dishes of all sorts — I’ll chiffonade it over anything that can stand up to its strong flavor. I have zero photographs of it, but we’ve also made a simple perilla syrup that has been used in sodas and the like.

Needless to say, I will not be spending $3.99 USD (!) on 10-15 perilla leaves at the grocery store ever again — I may even try to grow plants from seed next year. I encourage you to (carefully, with thought as to how it can be contained) plant some perilla in your garden next season, it was really a remarkable additional to this year’s chaotic plot.

The nomenclature for perilla / shiso is all kinds of jumbled up for various reasons. The plant I’m talking about is more specifically referred to as “Korean perilla”, deulkkae, kkaenip, sesame leaves or p. frutescens

Maybe I should stop talking about focaccia and pizza, it’s a given that I am making them with whatever ingredient I am currently hyper fixated on