I'm not going to rail against my local produce shop. These people perform a minor miracle in keeping pretty beautiful and often seasonal products on their shelves. Trying to buy vegetables at the major grocery stores in Glasgow can be a nausea-inducing joke. Sometimes, if you go in the early evening or late on a Sunday afternoon, most of the vegetable aisle (the very small vegetable aisle) will be picked clean. Nothing but rows of empty boxes where over-packaged and over-refrigerated produce once stood. So this little place is amazing in comparison with heaps of ripe fruit, various jumbles of potatoes, onions and garlic and ginger, pretty crisp green vegetables, including spotless okra, and loads of South Asian vegetables that I don't know much about. And it's really cheap. And really close.
Normally, they also have a fine assortment of fresh herbs and what I was looking for the other day was a huge bunch of flat-leaf parsley and a couple of zucchinis. I was going to make Daccia's zucchini pasta because 1) I missed her and 2) it's a standard meal in my quick-dinner repertoire. But when I got to the shop I couldn't find any of that parsley. I wandered round and round the aisles in a daze, looking for those oh-so-flat leaves (the people who run the place are pretty used to my dance of indecision so they didn't bat an eyelash. They didn't notice that I was pouting slightly this time, not just being a space cadet). Because my decision was borne from the powerful twins of emotions and laziness, I couldn't change my mind. I couldn't suddenly think of something new to make for dinner. I had to substitute the parsley. And I had to substitute it with the curly stuff.
Now that it's not the 80s anymore, no one likes this parsley. It's because the flavour-to-abrasion ratio doesn't make it worth eating. It's not a pleasant thing to put in your mouth and the flat-leaf kind tastes nicer. It also never looked that great on the side of a plate. Who came up with that lie? Flat-leaf generally looks better in finished meals, it's little chopped leave stay put, they don't curl about in stubborn little clumps. But I had no choice and, I decided, in Glasgow one is often given potatoes when one is trying to make lemonade so innovation is a necessary skill.
If you are ever in a similar situation, here are two things to do with a huge bunch of curly parsley:
1) Parsley Pesto with Zucchini and Linguini
Daccia's normal recipe involves slicing the zucchini in long, thin strips and cooking them in a lot of butter, olive oil, garlic, salt and chili until they are tender. The zucchini is then tossed with pasta and loads of fresh parsley and cheese are added on top. This is very, very nice even when made by someone else.
I cooked the zucchini in exactly the same way as D, but I didn't add the garlic. Instead I took a few handfuls of that wiry parsley, a couple of cloves of garlic, the juice of one lemon and some olive oil and whizzed it up with a hand blender. I also cooked some linguini while all of this was taking place. Three activities at once. Because my timing is perfect, the pasta was ready to be drained just when the zucchini started to get nice and soft and smooshy (well, you actually have a fair bit of flexibility with the zucchini; it's not that delicate). The pasta was coated with the pesto, and the zucchini was added in and I topped it with grated cheese.
Really good, and you would never know that the uncool parsley had been anywhere near my kitchen!
2) Green Hummus
Despite what more famous people say about hummus, I really think it's much better to make it from scratch and with a lot of tahini. The texture is more interesting than anything you can buy in a store and you have a lot of control in adjusting the flavours, accentuating the ingredients that you think are tastiest. It's also good if you put a whole ton of parsley in it.
First, soak some chickpeas overnight. Yes, you could use a can, but I think that you shouldn't. We can disagree about this and still be friends. I used some organic ones, (about 1.5 cups dried) so my end product was both delicious and pretty smug.
Boil the suckers for over an hour the next morning with some salt. Then dump all those little guys in a blender, or a bowl that's deep enough for a hand blender. Next you just need to add some garlic (I used 3 cloves), lemon juice (I squeezed two), tahini (maybe 1/4 cup, maybe less), as much olive oil as you need to make it the consistency you want, and all of the parsley you have in your house. Whizz everything up. Maybe you need salt, too, depending on how much you used to boil the chickpeas. Taste it and see. The end result will have a lot of character and will make you question why you ever bought that junk in the plastic tubs. Remember, the garlic will get stronger with time, so don't go too crazy if you want people to kiss you in the near future.
I ate this with some tomatoes and toasted potato scones. Don't they look like an exotic flatbread in the picture below? Scottish cuisine is full of surprises.
(When was the last time you saw a garnish like this?
Don't answer the question if you live somewhere unfashionable. If it was last Friday night, just pretend that it's really been over two decades. Say this: "Oh! Look at that! It reminds me of Italian-American food from when I was a small and parsley-ignorant child! Ha! I know so much more now." Good. They believed you.)
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