Parsley

Day 16 of Spicemas

I actually like parsley, and it’s very useful in many recipes! Just… not the dried form. Even when it looks like it’s freeze-dried and fresh, as this packet from the spice Advent calendar did, there’s not a lot of flavor coming to the dish with it. In dried form, the best use for it is to add a bit of pretty to a meal, as I did for tonight’s lasagna, adding it into the ricotta, cheese, and egg mix that would be layered between pasta, meat, and sauce.

Fresh, though! My preferred form of parsley is the flat Italian parsley, which looks a lot like cilantro except that the leaflet tips are pointed rather than rounded and of course it smells and tastes very different. I’ll use the curly parsley in recipes, but I think the flavor is less refined and nice. Not sure how to express that in technical terms.

Italian Parsley growing in my garden, it will thrive all winter and I’ll carefully harvest from it, then in late spring it will bloom and die, but I’ll save seeds to replant.

I’m very fond of tabbouleh salad, for instance, which is parsley-centric.

The Kibbeh in a pan I made recently used a whole bunch of parsley, as well.

This recipe, though, uses parsley for a bright pop of green in an otherwise cream-and-beige dish. Which is completely legitimate, as we first encounter food with nose and eyes.