Camy here! And yes, I’m serious.
Whether you love or hate vegetables, I’d like some ideas from you guys. Here’s the setup (and a little gushing):
I belong to an organic co-op (which I luuuuv!!!) that delivers a basket of fresh organic veggies every week (to a pick up spot close to my house). We don’t get to choose what veggies are in the basket, but there’s always a huge variety and lots of it.
The cost is only a little more than what we spend on non-organic veggies at the supermarket. The quality is also ten times better because the veggies are picked when young and tender, since they’re being delivered from only a couple hours south of us in Central Valley.
We sometimes get veggies I’m not nuts over—radishes, for example—but luckily there really aren’t that many vegetables I don’t eat. I’m finding new ways to cook the ones I’m ambivalent about, like beets, and starting to like them a lot.
The good thing is that I’ve learned to cook and actually like veggies I’ve never eaten before. I’d never had Brussels sprouts or fava beans or fennel, and now I love them (now that I know how to cook them properly).
The co-op has been really good for my family too because I’m trying to lose weight, and on Sparkpeople.com (friend me!), they strongly urge people to eat more fruits and vegetables. Getting the co-op basket every week forces us to eat all the veggies before the next basket comes, so we’ve been eating a lot of vegetables, more than we would have if we went to the store to choose our veggies every week.
Okay (finally) here’s my quandary: We sometimes get herbs with our veggies. I have no problems using cilantro (after all, I am Asian, and cilantro is almost another food group) or basil (Italian dishes are my absolute fav—in my family tree, there must have been some obscure Italian who traveled to Medieval Japan and had kids), but what to do with parsley?
Parsley is one of those where I’m ambivalent about it, but I don’t hate it (radishes are a different story! Yuck!). The parsley is really good quality—very young and not big and tough; a bright, pretty green color.
I’ve been trying to cook different types of dishes with parsley, but for most of them, parsley is a garnish and the flavor of raw parsley is really strong.
I figure, if I can learn to cook parsley properly, maybe I’ll start to like it better (like what happened with fennel).
So…do you guys have any ideas? What do you use parsley for? Do you have any favorite dishes that call for some parsley?
Camy Tang lives in San Jose, California. She previously worked in biology research, she is a staff worker for her church youth group, and she runs the Story Sensei critique service. Her humorous romance, Single Sashimi, and her romantic suspense, Deadly Intent, are both out now. She also gives away Christian fiction on her blog and her newsletter YahooGroup.
Hi Camy!
If you need recipe with beets, let me know. My friend shared Russian borscht recipe, beet stew with chicken ( not the classic one but an improvised version.) And I can recommend it 100%.
Soooo, yummy! Just buzz on my wall on FB if you're interested.
Cheers! - Joy
Posted by: Joy Filipovic | April 22, 2010 at 01:41 PM
Thanks Joy! I just left a message for you on your FB wall!
Posted by: Camy Tang | April 23, 2010 at 02:34 AM
In Turkey and the Middle East, parsley is not just a garnish, it's a vegetable! And since I live in Turkey, a few things come to mind:
1. Use flat-leaf parsley. The curly stuff really isn't good for much more than a garnish.
2. There's always tabbouleh, a bulgur salad with tomatoes and parsley. Use fine bulgur, soak it (it doesn't need cooking) in water to cover. After it's plumped up, add an equal amount of chopped parsley or even more. Lots of adapted recipes call for less parsley but the best tabbouleh has lots. Add a chopped tomato, enough lemon juice to get it tangy the way you want, olive oil, and salt to taste.
3. Parsley Mücver - I always eyeball this, so measurements are approximate. Finely chop a couple big bunches of flatleaf parsley. Add a bunch or two of green onions, mix in. Add an egg or two, enough to wet the mixture well, then flour to get it to around pancake batter consistency. Add salt and black pepper to taste, and drop by spoonfulls onto a hot griddle and spread. Turn when browned on one side, drain. You can also add other herbs - chives, dill, cilantro, mint, arugula, be creative - and some chopped walnuts. Then you have what Iranians call "kookoo-ye sabzi." To really make it Iranian, add a bit of saffron to the mix, and if you like, some "zeresh" - dried barberries. They give great tangy bursts.
Turks generally eat mücver with a side of yogurt.
enjoy!
Posted by: Bob | June 05, 2011 at 06:17 AM