There’s a chance you’re only half paying attention to this post. Perhaps you’re scrolling through as college basketball hums in the background, while Your Friend Larry From High School tells an old story that’s experienced nine sequels and a rewrite since it happened in 2002.
If your mind has drifted from hoops and brackets to green beer and all things Irish, you’re not alone. But if you assume that four-leaf clovers are the luckiest leaves in the land, think again. Make no mistake: We’ll take a single four-leaf clover over thirty of the three-leaf variety that invade our lawn every year. But the green-leafed wonder we’re craziest about is cilantro.
Cilantro is a divisive flavor, which is part of the reason we love it so much. (For us, the bolder the better.) It’s the heart and soul of the Double Take Verde Good, a health junkie-approved salsa that marries tomatillos and Hatch green chiles. In honor of this weekend and all things green, we’ve thrown together three fun facts about one of our favorite ingredients:
1. It goes by multiple aliases. If you’ve ever seen coriander or Chinese parsley listed in a recipe, you can stop your search when you find the cilantro.
2. Whatever name you call it, this herb has taken many trips around the sun. It’s been around since Biblical times – and although “cilantro” is commonly associated with Mexican cuisine in North America, its roots (get it? Sorry) originate in southern Europe, North Africa, and western Asia.
3. Some of you reading this are totally repulsed by the taste of cilantro. If you think it tastes more like a mouthful of dish soap than deliciousness, your feelings are warranted – and backed by science. An estimated 4-14% of the population share this experience, and there’s a shared group of olfactory-receptor genes (and your parents) to blame.
If you identify with fact #3, the only thing we can say is this: Your loss. More Verde Good for us.
You can shop for Verde Good – and other Double Take varieties – by clicking here.