Dried Sage (Maramiya) - Whole Leaves

Sage is the odd one in this part of the range, and deliberately so. Everything else here is grown to be drunk. Sage leads a double life: a serious cooking herb in Italy, France and England, and an everyday infusion across the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Same leaf, two habits - and most people who know one have never tried the other.

The plant is Salvia, of the mint family, and the leaf is unmistakable: long, oval, grey-green, softly downy, quilted up close. Common culinary sage is Salvia officinalis; in the eastern Mediterranean the leaf drunk as maramiya is often a close relative, Salvia fruticosa, used the same way and tasting of the same things. Either way you are getting sage, and either way the aroma is camphor and pine over a resinous base.

That resinous quality is the point of it. Sage is not a soft, floral herb - it is astringent and savoury and stands up to fat and long cooking, which is why it goes with pork and butter and beans rather than delicate things. Brewed as tea it gives a drier, more herbal cup than chamomile or mint, closer to rosemary than to anything sweet, with a cool eucalyptus lift at the end.

In Egypt and the Levant it is maramiya, and the commonest use is not a cup of sage alone but two leaves dropped into a pot of black tea - a different and rather good thing, since the sage cuts the tannin and perfumes the whole pot. The habit runs around the northern Mediterranean too, where sage tea is ordinary rather than exotic: faskomilo in Greece, ada cayi in Turkey, sold in every grocer.

We sell whole dried leaves rather than rubbed or ground sage, and the reason is aroma. Rubbing shatters the leaf and multiplies its cut surface, so rubbed sage smells wonderful in the packet and flat six months later. A whole leaf keeps its oil behind an intact surface and gives it up when you crumble it between your fingers. It is also the only form in which you can see what you bought: good dried sage is grey-green and pliable, not brown and not dusty.

To brew, three or four leaves per cup, or a crumbled teaspoon, water just off the boil, five minutes, covered. Sage is strong, and a long steep turns it bitter rather than deeper, so take the leaves out. For the Levantine version, drop two leaves in with your black tea and brew as normal. Lemon and honey suit it; milk does not.

For cooking, the classic is the simplest thing in the book: whole leaves fried in butter until the butter browns and the leaves crisp, poured over pumpkin ravioli, gnocchi or plain pasta. Beyond that it belongs with pork and veal - saltimbocca is a leaf, a slice of veal and a slice of prosciutto and almost nothing else - with sausage, white beans, roast potatoes, and in the stuffing of a roast bird, which is where most English kitchens meet it. Add it early rather than late, and use less than you think.

Whole leaf is very light and very bulky, so the pouches run large: 50 g is already a substantial bag, and the 1 kg is a catering size closer to a cushion than a packet, for kitchens, not suitcases. Sage has a long history of traditional use around the Mediterranean as an everyday infusion, drunk plain or in tea. That is offered as a description of the custom, not as a health claim or medical advice.