About the Recipe
If you love the taste of shiso (or whatever you call it) then growing your own will save you a lot of money. These leaves come expensive if you buy them in an Asian or Japanese store! Growing shiso isn't difficult. Although it is described as a perennial, mine never seem to regrow in the following year, so I treat shiso as an annual and replant. Once your little shiso plant is established outside, it should give you plenty of leaves all through the summer and well into the autumn until the frost arrives. If you don't have any outside space, you can grown shiso successfully indoors as long as you have somewhere bright to place it. In fact, many Japanese only grow their shiso indoors as they believe (rightly) that it produces softer, sweeter leaves.
Ingredients
1 packet shiso seeds (also called green perilla or oba)
1 seed tray filled with potting compost
extra potting compost
water
1 sheet newspaper
Preparation
put 3 - 4 seeds in each plug of your seed tray
sprinkle a little more compost over the seeds so that they are covered (but you don't need to bury them)
mist the seed tray well with water
cover the seed tray with the newspaper (this prevents the compost drying out too quickly
place indoors or outside under cover
mist the newspaper daily until the seeds germinate. once, the germinated heads have appeared, remove the newspaper
once the seedlings are 3-4 cm high, repot into larger pots, mist well and keep inside or outside under cover
keep the earth moist and within 3-4 weeks, the plants should be about 10cm tall and developing a leaf system
plant outside in beds or large pots and keep well watered
(you can keep your shiso inside and it will still grow well as long as it receives enough light and water)
harvest the leaves when they are about 5-7 cms wide. these leaves will have the sweetest taste. you can leaves the leaves to grow bigger and mix them into (eg) salads