Let Your Garden Go to Seed

When the cilantro went to seed in her Minnesota plot, Amy Thielen, author of The New Midwestern Table (Clarkson Potter, 2013), turned to Hmong market vendors in St. Paul, where one woman taught her how to make a killer hot sauce with the prodigious herb. "She pounded garlic, fresh red chiles, and green cilantro buds with salt, thinned it all out with a drop of water and some fish sauce, and—wow!" says Thielen. "The cilantro's floral intensity goes head-to-head with the chiles. It's a great thing to do with cilantro gone rogue."