Chef Ali's Parsley Recipes
Parsley
Fresh parsley is full of flavor, vitamins and antioxidants. The curly parsley sprig of yore, awkwardly sitting atop a slice of orange belies nothing of the actual power of the parsley! Parsley’s main flavor is green, it adds freshness and vitality to rich, fatty, unctuous foods, it brightens and lightens. Parsley is the Bob Balaban of herbs—it may not be the star attraction, but the dish is ultimately better because of its presence.
QUICK ADDS –
Toss fresh parsley leaves with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper and strew them across a plate of pasta Bolognese or Alfredo.
Chop fresh parsley and add it to a rice pilaf or stuffing just before serving.
Save parsley stems to add flavor stock and soups, add fresh chopped parsley to soups (especially chicken) just before serving
Dress parsley leaves and thinly sliced white onion with red wine vinegar, olive oil + salt and pepper and add to a sandwich. (especially good with leftover roast chicken and Dijon mustard).
Persillade- Parsley Sauce
This simplest of sauces elevates any dish. Simply drizzled over a grilled chicken breast or a filet of fresh fish it quickly converts eating to dining. I like to toss it in with roasted vegetables right before bringing them to the table, or I spoon it over a simple roast chicken, grilled meat. Finish a risotto, or creamy pasta dish with a few spoonfuls. I use it as a layer is a mushroom lasagna, or I toss roasted mushrooms with a spoonful or so, also great with oven fried or roasted potatoes. And let me tell you it quickly makes fried or scrambled eggs (esp. duck eggs!) into a meal (it’s not bad on toast, but even better if that toast has something fatty like goat cheese or pate on top). It has endless uses and lasts a couple days in the fridge.
Ingredients
1 bunch fresh parsley
1 small clove garlic (or one large depending on your garlic preferences)
1 teaspoon coarse salt (You can use a fine salt IF that’s all you have, but a salt with some texture really takes this up a level- I recommend Maldon Salt or coarse Maine sea salt)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon vinegar (anything but balsamic, it’s too heavy) or the juice and zest of a lemon, or orange or lime.
Instructions
Place parsley and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and pulse 5 or 6 times, alternatively you can chop them by hand or use a mortar and pestle- you want a fine chop but not a puree (though a puree is fine too)
Stir in oil and vinegar and season with salt
Other things you can add
Persillade will become Salsa Verde if you add a finely chopped anchovy filet and a tablespoon or so of capers (or just capers if you are anchovy adverse)- I am particularly fond of this sauce on lamb or beef, and it is rather beautiful on grilled fish, or mix into roasted peppers and serve with thick grilled country bread.
Replace half the parsley with mint for an exotic South American twist.
A teaspoon or so of red pepper flakes will add heat, and is especially nice with pork chops, or added to a dish of pasta with clams or shrimp.
Replace the garlic with finely chopped shallot and spoon over raw, grilled or roasted oysters.
Replace the olive oil with softened unsalted butter and smear under the skin of a whole chicken right before roasting--- or top of the skin right before carving, or both.
Replace olive oil with mayonnaise and use a dip for cold poached seafood or with fried fish as an alternative to tartar sauce, or (my favorite) French fries
Parsley and Toasted Almond Pesto
I absolutely LOVE this with clams, and of course it is lovely with pasta. Simple bright fresh and green its beautiful and relatively inexpensive dinner put together in mere minutes. You can make a large batch of this and freezer for later use.
Ingredients
2 cups parsley (you can use the stems!)
1/2 cup toasted almonds (if you want to be fancy use Marcona almonds)
2 clove garlic
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/2 cup grated pecorino cheese
1 pinch red pepper flakes
2/3 cup olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
Place parsley, garlic, orange zest, nuts in bowl of food processor.
Process until it becomes paste
With processor running slowly add olive oil
Scrape in to a bowl, stir is cheese
Season to taste.
Toss into hot pasta along with a ladle full of pasta water for creamy sauce or dollop on to steamed little neck clams ---or both.
Other ways to use it
This pesto is also an AMAZING addition to grilled cheese, use a good strong sharp cheese like a tome. Aged gouda or cheddar.
Slather it on chicken breasts or shrimp before or after roasting (or both).
It’s also rather good spooned in to a minestrone soup (or creamy potato soup, or butternut squash soup or white bean soup—really almost any soup- it may seem wrong but a spoonful stirred into clam chowder is pretty great too)
Apple, Parsley & Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese
This is my favorite Thanksgiving salad. The Thanksgiving salad is a something my husband and I fail to agree upon, he thinks it an unnecessary addition, I think salad should be part of every feast. My Dad, who was my Thanksgiving cooking partner would have loved this salad—bitter greens with fruit and cheese, slightly decadent but not so over the top. I personally like it after the turkey, before dessert as a Cheese/Salad course hybrid with a few oat crackers and glass of tawny port. The apples, parsley & lettuces help ease your digestion, and the cheese and nuts get your palate ready for dessert.
I especially love this salad with foraged wild apples, I am deeply in love with those random roadside fruits, if you can get your hands on a rough skinned perfumed Russet apple they are glorious in this recipe, but any apple (even pear) will work.
Lovely on its own, serve it alongside a bowl of butternut squash soup with some good bread and you have a hearty fall lunch or lovely light supper. It is also a terrific side dish to roast pork, duck or sausages.
If blue cheese is not something you love you can use fresh goat cheese or leave out the cheese altogether or set a wedge of ripe creamy camembert, brie or other washed rind cheeses on the side.
This makes 2- 6 salads depending on the portion- actually it could just be a big salad for one, I love a big salad.
Ingredients -Salad
1 cup apple cut in thins slices or matchsticks (I don’t peel them but you can)
1 cup fresh parsley leaves (I prefer flat leaf for this salad)
1 cup bitter lettuces (radicchio, endive, frissee or all three) julienned or in the case of frisee torn in small fluffy pieces
½ cup toasted walnuts
½ cup celery leaves (those pale green leaves lurking deep in the heart of a head of celery)
Salt & pepper to taste
½ cup good local blue cheese, crumbled
Ingredients - Dressing (can be made ahead up to 3 days ahead)
1 small shallot diced (about a tablespoon or so)
¼ cup apple cider vinegar (if you can find some good artisan vinegar that is the best)
½ tablespoon honey
2/3 cup Olive oil OR 1/3 cup grapeseed oil + 1/3 cup walnut oil
1 teaspoon fresh Thyme leaves
Instructions- Dressing
Pour vinegar over shallots and let sit while you prepare the vegetables
Whisk honey & thyme leaves into the vinegar and shallots
Slowly whisk oil in to the vinegar mixture
If you are using 2 oils start with the grapeseed and finish with the walnut oil
You can also just put in all in a mason jar, screw the cap on and shake hard about 20 times
Instructions- Salad
Toss the parsley, celery leaves and lettuces together
Add the apples
Season with alt and pepper
Toss altogether with dressing
Top with walnuts & blue cheese
Nettle Frittata
Nettle Frittata
1 bag Stinging Nettles (approx 1/4 lb)
6 duck eggs
Fresh chives (approx 1/2 bunch)
Olive oil or butter
Salt and pepper
1. Blanch nettles, drain, and rough chop (see nettle instructions).
2. Chop chives fine.
3. Beat 6 duck eggs in bowl.
4. Add nettles, chives, salt and pepper to eggs and mix.
5. Heat some olive oil or butter in a skillet, and pour in beaten egg mixture.
6. Cook without stirring over medium heat a few minutes, until bottom is set. FLIP the frittata by holding a plate against the skillet and flipping it on to the the plate. Then slide the frittata back in the skillet and cook a few more minutes.
Slice and serve with spinach salad or something else tasty!
Chive and Tarragon Duck Egg Omelette
Herbs are in! It's always exciting to have the first flush of anything, and spring herbs are really special. They add fresh, flavorful dimensions to any dish, and egg dishes are especially suited to highlight the herbs used with them. You can use any herbs you choose, but we really like this combination of chives and tarragon. This recipe serves two hungry people.
Ingredients
Two sprigs tarragon
5-10 chives
Four duck eggs - five to six chicken eggs if you want to substitute
Olive oil, butter or bacon fat (for the pan)
Recipe
Put a skillet on the stove on medium-high. Put your cooking oil of choice in the pan.
Break the eggs into a mixing bowl and beat lightly. Strip the tarragon leaves from the stem and chop into about 1/2" pieces. Chop the chives more finely, to about 1/4". At this point you can mix the herbs into the eggs,where they will make beautiful green specks, or save them to go just in the middle (in the middle they will be just-warmed, not cooked, so you get more fresh-herb flavor).
When the oil is shimmering - but before it smokes - pour the beaten eggs into the skillet. Turn down to medium-low. If you like a gooey omelette, add your herb (or other) filling (see notes!) when the underside of the omelette just starts to brown and bubbles have come through to the top surface. If you like your eggs firmer, wait until the surface of the eggs loses its shiny look to add your filling.
Gently fold the top half of your omelette over onto the bottom half. If cheese was one of your additional fillings, wait a minute or two for it to melt. Otherwise, cut in half, serve, and enjoy!
Note: Other great fillings include cheese of any kind, sauteed spinach, mushrooms, nettles, or pea shoots, cooked bacon or sausage...the sky is pretty much the limit!
Garlic Scape Pesto
Garlic scapes are one of the best heralds of summer. Up here in Maine, we plant garlic cloves in the fall, letting them grow some roots before the winter freeze. Then we weed and and feed them painstakingly in the spring. Garlic, like many other alliums, is day-length sensitive. It will only put on vegetative growth until the summer solstice. Then, it will start to form a bulb and mature. We try to get as much vegetative growth as we can, because a bigger plant essentially means bigger garlic!
Garlic scapes are the flower stalk of the garlic plant. Hardneck garlic varieties produce scapes, whereas softneck varieties have been bred to produce as few scapes as possible so the plant sends all its energy to the bulb. We grow mostly hardneck varieties (Phillips, German Extra Hardy, Georgian Fire, a strain of Music from NY and a strain of Music improved on in Bowdoinham) and one softneck (Inchelium Red).
When we pick garlic scapes, we not only get a delicious vegetable, we also cause the garlic plant to send its energy back into bulb forming. So by growing lots of hardnecks, we don't get as great a percentage of energy going to the bulb as with soft necks, but we'll take the garlic scapes instead. So will you, too, if you try this pesto!
Ingredients:
2 cups garlic scapes (about 20 scapes, and no need to be super exact)
1 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
Chop the garlic scapes into pieces about an inch or smaller. You can see from the picture above that I am not very scientific about it. Put a quarter of the scapes, the salt, and a big splash of the olive into a food processor and blend until it starts to smooth out. Add the rest of the scapes and olive in batches until the whole thing is as smooth as you want it.
Note: At this stage, you can also add nuts (2 tablespoons of pine nuts, sunflower seeds, or chopped walnuts), cheese (2 tablespoons of parmesan), lemon juice (2 tablespoons), or anything else you fancy in your pesto (a 50-50 garlic scape/basil blend is very nice).
Serve on toast, pasta, grilled veggies, you name it! Alternatively, you can freeze it in any freezer container and get it out in the depths of winter when you need to remember summer.
Enjoy!
Savory Dutch Baby with Spring Greens
Total comfort food - the fillings can make it healthier (or cheesier!) depending on what you're in the mood for.
This yummy treat is also known as Finnish pancake. I wouldn't be surprised if it had other names also. It's simple and delicious. You can make a sweet version (I'll explain in the Notes), but I love the savory kind. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I have adapted this recipe from The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook, by Sharon Kramis & Julie Kramis Hearn. This recipe is indeed perfectly suited to a cast iron skillet or a small Dutch Oven. It serves 4.
Dutch Baby in the Dutch Oven. Who knows how these things get named.
Savory Dutch Baby
3 tablespoons butter
8 extra-large eggs*
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
2 cups filling - for example:
1 cup grated cheese and 1 cup wilted spinach
1 cup wilted nettles and 1 cup caramelized onions
1 3/4 cup wilted sorrel and 1/4 cup chopped chives
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Prepare the fillings first. This is a very forgiving recipe, so you don't have to be exact. To wilt the greens, heat a pan (I usually use a cast iron skillet) on medium-high heat with a splash of oil or butter. When the pan is hot, toss in the greens and immediately pour about 1/4 cup of water (or lemon juice or vinegar if you like tangy) over the greens. They will steam and curl up quickly. Stir them around to steam them evenly. When they are thoroughly limp but still brightish in color, remove the greens from the pan to a bowl, draining them and discarding extra liquid in the pan. You can also blanch the nettles in salted, boiling water for a few minutes (and then drain them) instead of wilting them - as always, with nettles, remember to wear gloves or use tongs!
Melt the 3 tablespoons butter in the skillet. While it is melting, whisk together the eight eggs, flour, and milk. You can also blitz them in a blender or food processor if you want a really smooth texture.
Fold the fillings you are using into the batter, and pour the mixture into the skillet. Place the skillet in the oven and bake about 20-25 minutes, until the top is golden brown and puffy.
As soon as it is done, slice it up and serve!
Notes
*You can substitute eggs of any size, but you want to have about the same volume of eggs. Eight extra-large chicken eggs is usually around 2 cups - see this article in the Portland Press Herald's Source for more info about cooking with varied egg sizes.
To make a sweet version, omit the fillings. Mix up the batter and bake as directed. Serve with your favorite pancake topper - maple syrup, blueberry sauce, lemon juice and powdered sugar...!