Parsley!!! I love it!

The best falafel I've ever had had so much parsley and mint inside that the inside of the falafel was green.

Flat leaf, love it.
Curly, not so much.

I've found that if there's a fair amount of mint mixed into the parsley, I can tolerate a LOT more parsley - which means a minty taboulleh is my favourite.

mrs. hamburger makes omelettes for hamburger that are nearly green from their parsley and chive content.

Of course FLAT parsely! Sorry for the omission, I thought that was a given......

The tabouli for which I pine is almost entirely parsley and lemon juice. There's just a few bits of tomato, grain, onion and some spice I haven't nailed down. I tried to replicate it - it was a hit with my mom and sister, but it wasn't just right. Sigh.

parsley - good and good for you.

You can make a pesto with it instead of the basil, and chopped walnuts instead of pine nuts, and I think you still use garlic, olive oil, and grated parmigiano - but I wonder, some might use a bit of walnut oil...



And of course flat parsley, which I usually see called italian parsley in the market. Though I don't mind the curly..

pesto - now, that's what I was thinking. Something along those lines - a way to preserve it.

This is from a website called something like Thorngrove - back with the link in a minute. (Lots of parsley pesto recipes on google). A lot of them have lemon in the ingredients, though this one doesn't happen to.

Flatleaf Parsley & Walnut Pesto

It occurs to me I should mention that I sent my Euro Blogging By Post parcel to Austria, into the hands of Gerda of Dinner for One. Amongst the items was a jar of home-made Flatleaf Parsley & Walnut Pesto, one of my favorite dressings for pasta. Pesto can actually be made from herbs other than basil, and I encourage you to try different ones out. Once you get over the shock of the new I think you'll find them delicious. Gerda wrote to say she and her friends thought this was "incredible" (yes! converts!) and could I post the recipe. I tend to improvise a bit with pesto as it varies depending on what I have to hand, but here's prettymuch what I did for that batch:


Flatleaf Parsley & Walnut Pesto
1 really big bunch of Italian Flatleaf Parsley
2 large pinches of Maldon Salt or Sea Salt
2 cloves of Garlic, crushed
4 Tb Parmesan, grated
2 Tb Pine Nuts
3 Tb Walnuts
1 Tb soft Butter
1/2 cup Olive Oil*

Put half the parsley, salt and garlic in a food processor and whizz it around until finely chopped.
Traditionally you break up the herbs with a mortar & pestle, but that really doesn't work for parsley...
Add the rest of the parsley, salt and garlic and whizz until combined finely.
Crush the walnuts and pinenuts in a mortar and pestle, reserving 3 or 4 or the walnuts.
Add the cheese, nuts and butter to the mixture bit by bit, whizzing until combined.
Very very slowly, dribble in the oil, whizzing until the mixture is a fine blended paste. This should take a while to ensure the oil is completely mixed in.
Break the remaining walnuts into small pieces and add to the finished pesto for a bit of texture - this step is optional.
Put pesto in a cooled sterilized jar** (so the pesto doesn't accidentally cook) and cover the top with half a centimetre of oil.
This should keep it good without refrigeration for at least a month. Once open, refrigerate and eat within 4 days.


Edit - here's the link -
http://thorngrove.typepad.com/table/2006/04/flatleaf_parsle.html

Oooh, yummy! I remain partial to pinenuts/pignoli/pinons. I am not a big fan of walnuts. And, I prefer the non-lemon pesto, so this looks like a great recipe! Thanks, Osso!

Here's a version with lemon in it -
http://magazines.ivillage.com/countryliving/recipefinder/recipe/0,,608909,00.html

There was another recipe I didn't nab a little further down on the google list that had a parsley pesto with shrimp/risotto, and that one just had lemon zest but no lemon juice...

There was another recipe I saw that didn't use walnuts, just pine nuts...

Oh, yeah, and the garlic varies. One used ten cloves, and I notice the Thorngrove recipe uses two..

At this point, I don't probably have enough fresh parsley for parsley pesto, maybe I do. Maybe I'll buy another bunch. Maybe I'll try a couple different recipes....... I have a project!

My guinea pig, Mo, also loves parsley. He starts shrieking at the top of his lungs if he even suspects there is some in the vicinity-- curly, flat, makes no diff to him...

You guys should hang out sometime and talk parsley.

At first I thought you meant that someone at your house (a person) was your culinary guinea pig - the person you tried out recipes on. Not the actual animal variety of guinea pig. So, I was picturing a grow man or a child shrieking and making a fuss about parsley. Wierd.

Is Mo short for Maureen? Maurice? Moamar? I have a soft spot for guinea pigs..

heeheehee! That's a great image...I keep imagining a person just wordlessly shrieking at the sight of parsley and I can't stop giggling...Much better than my mundane old literal guinea pig!

Aw, Osso, you've known guinea pigs? Have you had them as pets? Now that I know someone's a fan of them, I'll have to post pictures; I'm often a2k-ing with him on my lap...I don't really know why he's named Mo; he came pre-named because I adopted him from some neighbors who couldn't keep him anymore-- but Maurice really has a ring to it! I think that's going to be added to the long list of his nicknames.

Sorry to hijack your thread, lil'k, it just made me laugh to see someone mention a love of parsley, since Mo's the biggest fan of it in the world!

Cypher - No problem! You're not really highjacking the thread, anyway. And, I think the image I now have of you shopping with Mo in your coat pocket is as funny as the shrieking human parsley lover.

This will probably put you all off, but then it's real life. I was a tech and then chief tech in a lab that did have a few animals at the end of the hall, though that wasn't the primary interest of all those labs, What we did was make antiserum. We were interested in the simplest, antiserum to anti IgG, IgA, or IgM. (as I remember, not sure which happened for gps or rabbits).
Not really anything different than any of us having a mild shot. None of our guinea pigs or rabbit really fluffed their noses at any of that. Well, no, they didn't love it but it wasn't all so horrible.

I worked in immunology/collagen disease research at the time. This was in the beginning, not even sure we had any animals in my last years there. The animals weren't injected with any disease stuff. And in time, the simple antibody sera, antisera, that we needed, was available from companies. We were in research and sort of early on the cusp.

Anyway, I used to carry a guinea pig around in my labcoat pocket. Surely that is a no no now, but not back then.

They got me back, I am rather badly allergic. Still, I love 'em.

On rabbits, we needed to sacrifice one of ours. I got my friend Bonnie to take him, And then Bonnie found him a ranchy place to live. All lab folk aren't scum.

Whew, glad that story didn't get TOO scary! You had me worried for a minute there-- I had to cover Mo's eyes...

If not for the allergies I guess osso would be the one shopping with a guinea pig in her pocketses!

That's true, they're darlings...