I Heart Parsley

What is it with parsley anyway?

I recently read a restaurant review in which one of the dishes was slagged because it committed the cardinal sin of only being garnished with "the ubiquitous and boring smattering of parsley". I'll commend the reviewer for her use of "smattering", which ranks right up there with "kerfuffle" and "fisticuffs" as those words which should be thrown into conversation as often as possible. What I cannot abide is her hate-on for poor parsley. What gives?

Let's get one thing on the table right now.  I wholeheartedly agree; a slice of yellowed, limpid tomato within a cup of iceberg lettuce topped with a sprig of curly parsley doesn't excite me either.  Somewhere between the onset of fine cuisine and 1975 there must have been published a handbook, perhaps something titled Radish Roses and 101 Other Garnishing Cliches, and this little dandy was on page one.   Could this be why the mere mention of the word parsley conjures up images of a tiny tree-like sprig languishing on the plate amid the dregs of what was probably only a mildly passable meal?  Can parsley be relevant?

Roesti, Soft-Scrambled Eggs, and a Smattering of Parsley.
Photo: K. Hughes

I happen to love the stuff.  It's super easy to grow, and I plant it neat hedges along the edges of my garden so that I always have enough.  Flat leaf or curly, it doesn't matter, it looks gorgeous and both varieties have a mild, fresh, grassy quality and lasting green colour that can take the simplest dish to new heights both taste-wise and visually. It is more robust than many of the green leafy herbs, and keeps its colour and shape when heated. It doesn't blacken like basil, and can easily stand in when you are cooking for cilantro haters.  Companion planted, it attracts predatory insects which then feed on other pests in the garden.

I love to stir lots of coarsely-chopped flat leaf, or Italian parsley into a bare-broth soup. Tiny snippets of curly parsley give softly-scrambled eggs new dimension.  A mix of salad greens is given another layer of flavour when whole leaves of both varieties are tossed into the mix. At the end of the season, batches of parsley pesto make their way into my freezer to be swirled into creamy mashed potatoes and leeks, spread on thick slices of multigrain bread and grilled with old cheddar, or drizzled over oven-roasted tomatoes.  I always keep a container of chopped parsley in the fridge to add a touch of summery green to nearly anything, and the stems get tossed into every stock I make.

The Lebanese get it.  Their divine salad of bulgur wheat and heaps of fresh chopped parsley, Tabbouleh is a top notch way to enjoy the way parsley commiserates so well with other flavours, fresh lemon, garlic, and toasty grains.