The way I use herb jam in my kitchen, it could be considered a mother sauce. The stuff is so flavorful, nimble, and dependable that it naturally finds its way into countless meals from spring through fall.

Let go of your preconceived notions of jam—this is not that. This is savory, complex, and deeply green, somewhere in between pesto, tapenade, and saag. It’s so versatile, it can be enjoyed with crackers, crunchy vegetables, crusty bread with soft cheese, slathered onto sandwiches, stirred into pasta, or spooned over poultry or fish.

It’s a workhorse condiment, serving many functions, simultaneously. One, it uses things that need to get used, like the surplus of greens that I seem to always grow or buy too many of, and the bits of herbs on the verge of wilting in the fridge. Two, it helps me incorporate large quantities of a diverse array of greens into my diet without having to stare down heaping mounds of salad every night. Three, it’s forgiving—I’ve never made one I didn’t like, even though I make it a little differently every time, and therefore, four, it’s never boring.

I first made herb jam following a recipe by the venerable Paula Wolfert, but have since come to see that it is less a recipe for one single, finite thing, but rather, a methodology, a scaffolding from which to create infinite iterations of herb jam, depending on the season, what’s in your fridge, and what flavors you’re desiring that day. Most versions I see online utilize familiar garden greens and herbs like spinach, parsley, and cilantro, which is the combination I began with, and is delicious, but I quickly realized that this is the perfect place to play with the forgotten flavors (and nutrition) of so many wild herbs that are so often growing much more abundantly that spinach and parsley but get overlooked because we’re not sure what to do with them. This is what to do with them.