Parsley is Food

I love parsley. I'll chop it up and stuff it into burgers by the handful. Sometimes I'll add it to stews in huge quantities. Tonight I whipped up a simple parsley, cucumber and tomato salad that was delicious.

The parsley salad was extremely easy. Wash a big bunch of parsley carefully and dry in a dish towel. Remove the leaves from the stalks, discard stalks, and chop up the leaves. I then took a cucumber, peeled it, and chopped that up into cubes about half a centimeter big. Last was a ripe tomato, which I also chopped up into small pieces. It all went into a bowl with the juice from two lemons, a bit of olive oil, a bit of rice vinegar, and some turns on the salt and pepper grinders.

Tomorrow we hit the road to Nantucket, so this was another "what's in the fridge to use" evening. Somehow we ended up with a bunch of unused vegetables, and yet again an uneaten green pepper, so I made a different kind of stuffed green pepper. As in the previous recipe, I halved the pepper and seeded it, leaving the stem. I then steamed the halves for about 7 minutes, immediately cooled them under some cold water to slow the cooking, and preheated the oven to 350F.


In a saute pan, I put a tbsp of butter and some olive oil, let that warm up over low heat, and added some chopped up red onion, celery, fennel, and a big handful of basil. I added some sea salt and pepper to taste. After the vegetables had slightly softened, I turned up the heat and added about a quarter cup of white wine, letting that cook down for a few minutes until there was no excess liquid. Then I turned off the heat.

I let the vegetables cool for a few minutes, then chopped up some mozzarella cheese and tossed it in. What I wish I had also done was make some breadcrumbs in the food processor to add to mix. I stuffed the peppers with the mix, laid some slices of mozzarella on top, and popped it in the oven (in a small baking dish) for about 25 minutes.

The final part of the meal was a broccoli rabe Italian sausage that I grilled.