Is It Worth It To Grow Home-Grown Parsley? Hell Yes! [Plus: Bonus Butterflies]

Readers, we've been running a little experiment over the past two years with home-grown parsley. We wanted to see if it was worth it to grow it at home--worth it in the sense of the cost, the time involved, and the quality of the parsley we grew.

Well, it is worth it... in many more ways than we expected. Two years ago, in springtime, Laura bought a $1.49 packet of parsley seeds, and put them in a big $2.50 plastic pot filled with $2-3 worth of potting soil. We set that baby out on our little balcony and just let it grow.

Any time we had a recipe calling for fresh parsley I'd run out there with a pair of scissors, give Mr. Parsley a quick haircut, and return with a handful of parsley so fresh and fragrant, you could hardly believe it.

Better still, when winter rolled around that year, we just brought our parsley plant inside and let him keep growing. The following spring, not only did he yield even more parsley, he began flowering too, which later produced (free) seeds for us. We'll probably give those away, but if we wanted to, we could theoretically grow still more parsley in still more pots at minimal extra cost.

As it was, that one pot by itself produced plenty of parsley, as much as we could use. And each time I harvested parsley off of this plant, I saved money, time, and effort in a wide range of ways: I no longer needed to remember to write "parsley" on my grocery list, I no longer needed to pay a grocery store $1.99 for a bunch of three-week-old parsley leaves shipped in from California or Mexico. For two years and counting, I never even needed to think about this very common recipe ingredient.

All of these benefits grew from a one-time cost of less than $7.00. Which means this pot of parsley easily paid for itself in season one, and will continue to offer value and convenience to us for who knows how many years.

This year, however, there was yet one more benefit, a gigantic one. A few weeks ago, we started seeing a few visitors in and around some of the leaves on our parsley plant--little dark caterpillars like this one:

The other day I took a close look around in there and was shocked to see this guy!

We freaked out at first (Gahhh! What the heck is that??) but then discovered it's the caterpillar of the black swallowtail butterfly--a beautiful butterfly that's perhaps second only to the Monarch in popularity among butterfly fans. The smaller, darker caterpillars were simply at an earlier development stage. The freakish looking "mature" caterpillar should begin forming a chrysalis in another 10 days or so.

Wow. So in addition to two years' supply (and counting) of fresh parsley, we got a bonus free lepidoptery class too. Yep, it's definitely worth it to grow home-grown parsley.


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Spicy Eggplant Ratatouille

Today I bring you a recipe for a spicy eggplant stew. It’s another imaginative and unusual dish adapted from Jay Solomon's Vegetarian Soup Cuisine. It is low in sodium, high in healthy vegetables and laughably cheap to make (the entire recipe can be made for around $8.00).

This is a brand new dish that we made for the first time last week, and it was a big hit in our home. It contains no added salt and it certainly doesn’t need it: the jalapenos add an extra kick to the dish, and the cumin, red wine and fresh parsley make it flavorful and exotic.

Best of all, this recipe is easy. In well under an hour you can put yet another healthy meal in front of your family without boring them to death with bland food.

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Spicy Eggplant Ratatouille
(slightly modified from Jay Solomon's Vegetarian Soup Cuisine)

4 Tablespoons olive oil or canola oil
1 onion, chopped
1 medium eggplant, diced
1 green or red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 jalapenos or other hot chiles, seeded and minced
4 cups water or vegetable stock
1 14-ounce can stewed tomatoes
1/4 cup tomato paste (that's 4 Tablespoons)
1/4 cup dry red wine
2 Tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 15-ounce can red or pink beans

Heat oil in a large soup pot. Add onion, eggplant, bell pepper, garlic and chiles. Saute over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add water, stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, wine and seasonings (everything else but the can of beans). Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beans just a few minutes before the end. Let stand for 10 minutes and serve with optional whole grain bread.

Serves 6+
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Note: One very important warning if you use fresh jalapeno peppers--be careful what you touch after chopping these guys up! Don’t touch your eyes (or for God’s sake any other highly sensitive body parts) unless you’ve first carefully scrubbed your hands.

We will speak of this no more.

Shrimp in Garlic Sauce (Camarones Ajillo)

Thanks to my new girlfriend Daisy, I'd like to bring you yet another amazing (and amazingly easy) recipe: Camarones Ajillo, or Shrimp in Garlic Sauce.

This recipe, a classic Latin dish, passes the five easy questions test with flying colors and it is utterly delicious. I am always on the lookout for dishes like this that are easily made and uncomplicated, yet still somehow just a bit exotic--at least to my simple New Jersey palate. And of course I'm particularly partial to any recipe containing shrimp.

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Shrimp in Garlic Sauce
Very slightly modified from Daisy Cooks! by Daisy Martinez

Ingredients:
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tablespoon hot red pepper flakes
12 garlic cloves, sliced
2 pounds large or jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1/2 cup dry sherry
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

Directions:
1) Heat the oil and red pepper flakes in a large non-stick skillet over medium-low heat just until the oil starts to color. Don't heat the red pepper flakes over high heat or they will discolor and turn the oil bitter. Stir in the garlic and cook, shaking the pan, just until the garlic begins to color, about 2 minutes.

2) Increase the heat to high, add the shrimp, and season them with 1/2 teaspoon of salt (see note 3 below). Stir the shrimp so they cook evenly until they turn pink. Keep an eye on the garlic. It will continue to brown, but don't let it burn. If it starts to darken, lower the heat and remove the pan from the heat for a few seconds.

3) When the shrimp are pink all over, pour in the sherry and bring it to a boil. Cook, stirring, until the shrimp are cooked through and the liquid has been reduced by about half and lightly thickened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the parsley. Scrape the shrimp and the sauce into a serving bowl and serve hot.

Serves 2-3.
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First, a few brief notes to add some extra context to how to make this recipe:

1) Be sure to use only high-quality ingredients for this dish, and be particularly sure to use only extra-virgin olive oil. As Daisy says in her book, simple recipes like this just don't give you anywhere to hide.

2) This is a textbook example where you need to read the recipe twice, because there are definitely some timing issues in the making of this dish. For example, if you flake out and don't already have the parsley rinsed, chopped, and at the ready when it comes time to add it in, you will have overcooked shrimp. Always make sure you have a sense of the "rhythm" of a recipe before you plunge in.

3) Long time readers of Casual Kitchen of course know that using excess salt is cheating. However, it is not cheating to use some salt in the particular case of this recipe (as is often true in cooking, a dash of moral relativism comes in handy on occasion...). I modified the recipe slightly to use half of the salt the recipe originally calls for, and found that just that small amount of salt is all it takes to concentrate the flavors of this the dish.

4) Regarding shrimp size: the recipe in its original form calls specifically for 10 jumbo shrimp, but almost any size shrimp will do here. Just make sure to use two pounds of shrimp in order to keep the ratio of ingredients in the recipe constant. Also, the smaller the shrimp, the shorter the cooking time for said shrimp. Be mindful of this variable--nobody wants to eat tough, overcooked shrimp.

Finally, I've added below some selected photos from the making of this dish, as Daisy's cookbook unfortunately does not contain any photos or illustrations of the steps of this particular recipe at all. It's one of the very few weaknesses of her cookbook.

This is the thickness you'll want with your sliced garlic:

Hot pepper flakes and garlic simmering in oil:

Chopping parsley. One pass cutting lengthwise and one pass cutting crosswise:

Adding the shrimp:

Serve with a mound of white rice in the center:


Enjoy!



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Fresh Herbs, Part 2: Solutions to the Waste Problem

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed how using fresh herbs can invigorate your cooking. Today I'm going to share three solutions for one of the most frustrating problems with fresh herbs: the fundamental mismatch between the small amount of herbs you might need for a typical recipe and the huge amount of herbs you usually have to buy in the grocery store.

Years ago, whenever I'd break free from dried parsley mode and actually include fresh parsley in a recipe, I’d end up using at most 25% of what I bought. Keep in mind, this was back in my broke grad student days when things like Fried Rice for Under $1 were necessary staples in my kitchen.

I felt wasteful in two ways: I was wasting extra money on what seemed (to my salt-habituated palate anyway) like an unnecessary ingredient--and then I’d feel even more wasteful ultimately throwing most of away. Why blow an extra buck on something just to watch most of it decompose in my fridge?

Today we'll solve the waste problem once and for all, so you can guiltlessly include these fresh greens in your invigorated cooking.

1) Apply the Concept of Scale
My first suggestion for solving the waste issue is an application of my concept of “scale” in cooking (see #4 in my Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking post). There are two ways to apply this concept here.

First, if it's a scalable recipe, you can make a double or triple batch and right there use up all the fresh herbs you had to buy. Best of all, you'll have the added bonus of not needing to cook again for the next few days. The tradeoff, unless you have a big family or can freeze some for future dinners, is that you might be eating this same food for a week until you're totally sick of it. At Casual Kitchen, we solve this by making double or triple batches of two dishes and alternating them all week.

Second, you can apply scale to your recipe file box. Develop a diversified enough recipe collection such that you’ll always have multiple meal ideas that include fresh herbs. It's not that hard to find recipes that will fit the bill. For example, if you’ll look through the recipes of this blog, you'll find several recipes that use...

…parsley:
Red Lentils and Rice
Spanish Chickpea and Garlic Soup
Portuguese Kale and Potato Soup
White Bean and Black Olive Soup

…cilantro:
Thai Pasta Salad

…or, in one of my favorite fresh greens dishes, parsley, mint AND cilantro:
Fattoush!

...and these are all recipes from my little blog alone. There's a whole world out there of recipes to choose from. Make some extra time to look for ideas to expand your palate and your recipe collection. Elsewhere in this blog you can find some advice on easy ways to tell if a recipe you're considering is worth cooking.

2) Grow ‘Em Yourself
You’ll also find that lots of fresh herbs, like basil, rosemary, mint, chives and parsley, can be surprisingly easy to grow, either in your backyard, or (in our case) in pots on the windowsill or front porch. You can pluck out exactly what you need, rather than buying an entire bunch at the store. No waste here!

3) Use the Damp Plastic Bag Method
Also, I credit Laura with teaching me a surprisingly simple way to extend the “fridge-life” of fresh herbs by using the plastic bags the store gives you to carry your groceries. Place the herbs in the plastic bag, add a couple of tablespoons of water into the bag, and then tie the bag with a loose knot. Sturdy herbs like parsley, cilantro and mint will keep well for up to two weeks this way. Really sturdy greens like kale or swiss chard can keep for even longer.

Who knew there was so much to say about fresh herbs? I can't stress enough: try some new recipes that include them, stretch your cuisine, and de-habituate your palate to sodium. Your cooking will take a quantum leap forward in both artfulness and subtlety.

Invigorate Your Cooking with Fresh Herbs: Part 1

Today we’re going to start a two part series on the merits of using fresh herbs--like parsley, mint, cilantro, dill and chives--in your cooking.

By using these often overlooked and underappreciated ingredients, you can take your cuisine up several notches in sophistication, subtlety and healthfulness at a minimal extra cost. A large bunch of parsley costs roughly 99c in a typical grocery store, and most other herbs and greens are priced similarly.

For years I would pooh-pooh using herbs like these when I saw them called for in a recipe. If I saw a recipe that included fresh parsley for example, I’d either consider it an optional ingredient and leave it out, or I’d (shudder) use dried parsley from my spice rack.

Oh, the foolishness of youth!

The errors of my ways sprung from two serious flaws I had back then (yep, I only had two flaws). First, I was habituated to foods with high sodium content, so I had a desensitized palate that lacked the ability to appreciate these subtle-tasting herbs. Second, I foolishly considered buying fresh herbs wasteful. I'd end up using just a fraction of what I bought and let the rest go to waste. I'll address that issue later in Part 2.

Today, I will cover the use of these herbs in the context of improving the subtlety and quality of your cooking. We’ll talk about how the inclusion of simple and inexpensive herbs can make your food smell and taste surprisingly exotic, and we’ll talk about how our efforts over the years in reducing our sodium intake ultimately enabled these herbs to be powerful flavor-makers in our kitchen. Now, our cooking tastes better than ever to us, which of course makes it all the more fun to cook.

Free Yourself From the Chains of Salt!
Close readers of this blog know that using excessive salt is the worst form of cheating. Face it: it’s unhealthy (and for some people even dangerous) to consume too much sodium. Even more discouraging, a palate habituated to salt and salty foods simply cannot appreciate mild and subtle tastes.

Why did parsley taste like pointless nothingness to me years ago, such that I thought nothing of considering it an optional ingredient? Why does it seem like such a powerful and fragrant ingredient now? It all stems from our efforts to “stop cheating” and ruthlessly exclude salt from our diets.

What happened to us will happen to you: once the added salt wasn’t in our food drowning out everything else all the time, our palates gradually grew to recognize and appreciate subtler tastes. It’s analogous to being at a bar where the music is so loud that you can’t hear the voice of the cute girl (okay, or guy) you’re trying to pick up. Only after somebody turns down the music can you actually engage with the other person.

Food works in a similar way. Certain flavoring agents, like salt, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, etc., are simply too “loud.” Salt is of course widely overused in all sorts of prepared foods, and sadly we’ve often found salt audaciously overused in some of the most expensive restaurants in New York. Shameless.

Phew. Okay. Back to being subtle. One of the key purposes of this blog, above and beyond sharing cooking knowledge, advice and recipes, is to show that it can be fun and easy to cook healthy, interesting meals for you and your family. What's made cooking more fun for us in recent years is re-discovering ingredients like fresh herbs and greens that we can combine with other everyday ingredients in creative, and even exotic, ways. Get the salt out of your diet and watch how these herbs stimulate your palate.

Use fresh herbs. Look for recipes that call for them (I'll share several in Part 2). Think of what they'll add to the freshness, subtlety and flavor of any dish, for a mere 99c! That is a laughably cheap price to take the sophistication of your cooking up several notches. And if you succeed in breaking the salt habit, you'll not only enjoy food more, you’ll save a fortune down the road on high blood pressure meds.

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I’ll leave you with some pictures and brief advice on how to deal with fresh herbs by showing the prep work behind the fresh parsley we used in a dish we made the other weekend. It was another home run recipe from my new girlfriend Daisy which I’ll be posting shortly.

First, be sure to rinse these guys to death. Herbs tend to be grown in sandy soil, thus they can be pretty gritty. Nothing is worse than enthusiastically biting into a delicious mouthful of Fattoush and getting sand stuck in your teeth. I always aggressively slosh the greens around in a simple colander under a running faucet:

The next step is to de-stemify these guys (that’s a real word). Note that for some soups, especially the ones we often talk about in Jay Solomon's Vegetarian Soup Cuisine, you can speed up your prep time by skipping or being haphazard with this step.

That’s it! Easy to prepare. Check back soon for Part 2, where we’ll solve the waste issue once and for all, and share a variety of sample recipes where you can put these herbs to work.