Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks. Today I'm here with Late to the Party, which is like a black entity speaking out of somewhere. We're going to talk about the origins of parsley in cooking. What about that? Origins of parsley. I mean, somebody saw a weed on the side of the road, they picked it, they said, hey, this tastes like it would make a boiled ham better. And yeah, I mean, parsley, like what does parsley actually bring to the party?
Is it like, because I like parsley, you know, but like, what is the flavor of parsley? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say very grassy, very, yeah. For me, it's like the herb par excellence, you know, like it's the herb, yet at the same time is the most underrated, overlooked, you know.
You know, there is this saying in Italy, when you're meeting someone too much, you know, you see someone in the morning at the bakery, then in the afternoon at the bank, and then in the evening at a cafe or something, you say, man, you're like parsley, you're everywhere. That's really nice. I like that. Would you say that parsley is your most used herb? Not at all. I don't use it that much, probably because of what I'm saying, that it's pretty much everywhere.
For example, here in Spain, if you buy fish at the fishmonger, they give you like a handful of parsley for no cost, you know, just because it goes with the fish, you know, that's the way it goes here. But why is the question? Like I wonder where this like originates from, you know? I mean, like, because I think the two big ones are parsley and chives, right? I use chives like all the fucking time.
And if I had like, if I'd have to have like two basic herbs in my mise en place drawer, it would be finely cut chives and very finely cut parsley. Okay, but I would say maybe. Okay, but chives like the very fine ones, like ciboulette, because for me, that's more like a more gourmet-y, chef-y thing, while parsley is the herb of the people, you know? Really, I think chives are like could be in almost any dish. I mean, like for me, chives aren't fine dining-ish at all.
Like for me, chives are like really kind of like my grandma puts it in every salad on every like a quiche and blah. But I guess in the south of Germany, where I'm from, it's much, much more common. Yeah, here it's also quite common. I would say also in Asia, it's all over the place, chives. Chives, yeah, there's so many different types of chives, like I mean, garlic chives, you know? Completely different thing. And that's super, super common in Asian cooking.
Could you make a whole menu with parsley as the main ingredient? I mean, I'm sure that I could if I tried hard enough. But like that being said, parsley is a really, really wonderful herb. And I think it's really underused. And I can straight away think of a couple of examples where I think that parsley is really wonderful. I think parsley makes a really nice coulis.
If you make like a really intense green parsley sauce of like blanched parsley, especially when you keep some of the blanching water that has all the parsley flavor, you cool it down, you use that to mix the parsley. You can also make a cream soup with parsley. I've had that. 100%. I think it's really, really nice. Same as you would make it with spinach, but instead parsley.
I guess it has just like a way more grassy kind of flavor, almost like the feeling you have when freshly cut grass in a garden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But it's like it's really intense also because it's got such a high level of chlorophyll. I mean, I'm a huge fan of making parsley oil. I think parsley oil when made correctly is super lovely. It gets this like oily, dark, almost black, green quality.
And I love making like a, I call it like a parsley sauce, but it's basically like a very nicely made beurre blanc that then just before serving you split with a really generous amount of parsley oil. And it looks beautiful because like white and green, but also the flavor is super, super nice because like at the very end, adding this like intense parsley flavor to the sauce is just super beautiful. Goes with any white fish and it looks amazing. You know, it's like pearly. How do you make it?
So there's different ways of making it, but I like to use as little oil to parsley as possible. So the more parsley you can put into your oil, the better obviously. And I heat the oil with the parsley while mixing it to 60 degrees. I hold it there for a certain amount of time. Yeah, exactly. Ah, yeah, right, like for me, that's also the best way to do it. Like in a thermomix, at hot temperature, blending for a long time.
And then you have like this really like dark, almost petroleum, green petroleum oil. Exactly. And you really like loosen up the flavor, I think, you know, and then I strain it straight onto a bowl of ice to cool it down super rapidly. And then I hang it overnight to get rid of the rest of the water, right. With hanging, I mean that I put it into a bag that I put like upright on a hook. And then the water, the oil will settle on the top and there will be a little bit of water on the bottom.
And I basically just cut a hole into the bag and let the water drip out. So you just have the oil. But you can also do it like if you don't have a thermomix at home, you can do it in a very high powered blender, like a Vitamix, for example. This is a chef in London, Jeremy Chang, I think his name is, he's from Ekoji. And he I know that he makes a lot of his like sauces in a Vitamix by blending them at a very high speed so that they heat up. And he blends them and blends them and blends them.
That's how it like makes his emulsions and stuff like that. You can definitely do it like that also, but the thermomix obviously gives you like a controlled temperature. I guess I guess if I would do it at home, I would like do it old school way, you know, like blanching, mixing with oil and then straining. I guess now after learning this technique where you blend it while hot, I guess I wouldn't cool it down. I would throw it right away to the oil in the machine and blitz it hot.
And then let it cool. Yeah, I agree. Also really nice use for parsley oil is something I did about two years ago. Made a parfait like a semi-fredo, basically like a very plain milk base that we then emulsified a lot of very nicely made parsley oil into. And what you got at the end was a parsley parfait. Right. And it's really, really nice because it's like lightly sweet, but like with this very intense herbal parsley note, it was super delicious. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. As an ice cream.
Really, really nice. Also this technique of freezing leaves and then which it is something that I see Germans do a lot like German chefs freezing different types of herbs and then putting them in a pakkajet and blitzing the whole thing to get like this frozen herb powder. And I think with parsley it's a very good leaf to do that with. It's also a leaf that freezes pretty well. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's different things. It's like very basic cooking like mise en place techniques.
Like in Germany we call it a matte often, which is a very strange term because a matte would be like a mat, you know, like something that you would lie on.
Yeah. Often like either you pick the leaves of all the fibrous stems and then, yeah, like you said, freeze them and puree them into like a powder or you blanch them, squeeze out all the water, pack them into a pakkajet, freeze them and then blitz it a couple of times until you have a very, very smooth, very green herb puree that you then use to add to sauces to, you know, mousses or whatever, to creams to flavor and to color it.
But to pasta dough, for example, that's what you use it, you know, you would add like a spoonful of that into the pasta dough to make it really vibrantly green. Yeah. I think it's a very versatile herb and also herb that's also resistant pretty much. You can pretty much cook parsley, you know, you can throw it into a sauce from the beginning and cook it all over through and it will hold on, you know. I think that also makes it very interesting.
Also the name of the herb for me is funny because in German it's Peta Cilie, you know, Peta, which is Peter and in Spanish it's Peregil and in Catalan Pere is Peter. It's the same. So I wonder, it's probably some super old Christian name thing. I think it's a saint. It has to be like that. It has to be like, yeah, like a herb that has been used for millennia for sure. I'm pretty sure about that. 100%. Yeah. You know what other herb I find really underrated? Cherville.
Okay. You fuck with Cherville? Are you a Cherville man? I mean, like I'm not crazy about Cherville to be honest. Like I like it, but it's not, it wouldn't be on my top five of herbs. I think it would be on mine. I love Cherville. I think it's a little bit of a better parsley in a way. Like especially for like herb salads and garnishes and stuff like that. Yeah. Like I love this slight anisey flavor that it has. I think it's really underrated.
People just look at it as like a leaf, but it's really delicious. A parsley salad is not so easy. I can only think of Fergus Anderson's, this parsley salad with the bone marrow, you know? But besides that, I mean, because other herbs, I think my favorite herb is cilantro for sure. And cilantro is something I could throw to any salad anytime. And I just, you know, same as you would throw any other leaves or lettuces. And I think that works pretty well.
Also very versatile because you can use it fresh, completely different thing. If you throw it into a soup and cook it through, you will have like this completely different flavor profile. And yeah. And then in the normal ways you would use a herb, like chopped and integrated into a sauce or a dressing or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I'm also team cilantro, you know? I mean, for me, it's one of the most delicious things.
And also like one thing, something like I could almost always add more, you know? It's like almost never enough. It's just fucking delicious. But obviously half of the world's population doesn't like cilantro at all. So very common genetic defect, which is actually really interesting because I don't know if people know this or not. Common genetic defect, whether you like cilantro or not.
And if cilantro tastes like soap to you, it means that you have certain receptors on your tongue that people who don't have this with cilantro do not. So it's really funny. It's not just like sort of like, are you, your tongue is underdeveloped because you don't like cilantro is actually the other way around. Yeah, that's, do you know what a supertaster is? This is something that is a profiling for, for example, in the wine world, there are like people that are supertasters.
And so either you are or you're not. And this is again, genetically, this is not something you can choose or get better at or whatever. It's just, you're way more sensible. And these people that are way, way, way more sensible, these supertasters, it's usually also the people that don't like a lot of stuff. They're like super picky and, and this kind of things. Also yesterday I was talking about, I had a food tour today. We were walking around in an old town and trying different things.
And we were talking about perception in general, the different roles that can be played when you're tasting something. And something very interesting is memory, of course, when you try something that brings you to your childhood or brings you somewhere and you're like, oh, you know, like I know this smell or, or suddenly I remember for me, I get that every single time with rusty or a catawful puffa. My dad used to cook that at home and I was, I was literally a two year old baby.
And every time I smell that, I go directly there. You know, those catawful puffa with apple puree. I guess that's as German as it gets. There's no, there's nothing more German than that. Yeah. But it's crazy. I have exactly that with certain things as well. I have a very, very strong thing with Yuzu. Like if I eat or smell Yuzu. Wow. Yeah. Still today I get transported straight back to like the very first week that I like moved to Japan.
The first two weeks are like really ingrained in my memory because I was severely jet lagged and I would wake up at like five o'clock in the morning every day and I would go outside and like stroll through the neighborhood and sit in the park. And it was just the end of cherry blossom season. And it was like really magical to me. And I like super vividly remember sitting in the park, like a, like a small little park, neighborhood park, nothing crazy, nothing special. But like, it's so funny.
Now I'm like 30 something years old, but, and like I've cooked with Yuzu so, so many times, but still when I haven't like smelled it for a while and I come back to it, I like, I'm just like transported back. It's absolutely insane. And then going back to Parthi, you know, Carlos Arrellano, he's like Spain's most iconic TV chef. He's famous for putting Parthi on fucking everything. Every time he finishes a dish.
Yeah. But, but I don't know if it's like that anymore, but I remember we had cable TV at home, so we would watch his show like back in the nineties when, I mean, he has been on prime time since the eighties and still today. Like a huge TV personality here.
And every time he would finish a dish, he had like a herb garden there in his TV kitchen and he would always grab like a piece of Parthi and put it on top of everything, you know, like, and I guess that's also like a very old school thing of putting like a, you know, like a whole leaf or like a whole bunch of leaves of Parthi on top of food. Absolutely. I do like now that we're talking about it, I do wonder where this has like originated from because it's such a widespread thing.
And I feel like there must have been more of a reason for it than just I'm going to put something green on the plate. You know, this, this, this whole cliche of the curly parsley next to your like roast piece of meat or whatever you are schnitzel or I don't know, you know, it's so in a way we like that now it's such a cliche that chefs try to on purpose stay away from this, you know, so like where did it originate from?
But I guess it's like a common sense thing that it just gives it like a more fresh and vibrant look to the foods and you will find the same thing. For example, in Japanese cooking, you will see they use shiso leaves to decorate stuff or other kinds of leaves for that matter. You think that's the only reason? Do you think there is like, I don't know, like some liturgical Catholic reason or something like that? I think I think there must have been more of a reason than just aesthetics.
To keep vampires away. I like that one. Yeah, or to like eat it after the meal to like support your digestive tract or something. I don't know, man, you know, I'm just spit. I'm just spitballing. Yeah, you know, I just want to unravel the mysteries of the curly parsley. In your mind, look beyond the park, the curly horizon, you know, you know, what's not so cool and I've tried it and it's not that cool. It's like, well, you mentioned parsley parfait, but that was for sure savory.
But like, like a dessert. Okay, I was just going to say that that's something I haven't found like good ones. You've taught me you've talked about that parsley parfait before and I always thought it was savory. Ah, it is actually sweet. Like not overly sweet, but definitely sweet. But for a dessert and what do you have there? Okay, but then I guess it was very subtle, right? Like it was not like in your face parsley. Here you go. No, it was more like I mean, how can I describe it?
It's also like cooked. Like a whipped cream with parsley accent more something like that. Yeah, in a way, like you could definitely taste the parsley, but it had this like herbaceous, woody sort of oily flavor, like very green, very chlorophyll, you know, almost like I like, you know, like parsley matcha kind of thing, you know. By the way, I recently was invited to a truffle forum. That was fun. Oh, nice. I was joined with the Basque Culinary Center and the Culinary Institute of America.
So the word session on both schools and they were talking online. So the different association of producers of truffles here in Spain, which are Teruel and some other regions, which are the greatest producers in the world actually, they brought some truffles. So there was a tasting, explanation on the product and everything. It was good.
But I have to say, well, something I thought about you actually is that they were talking about something that I mentioned here on the podcast and you were like, no way, that's bullshit. How do you call it? Infusing eggs with truffles. Like if you storage them, if you storage them in the same Tupperware or whatever eggs and truffle, the eggs were become truffles. And that's true. That's true. Oh yeah.
So there were producers and experts and they were explaining like the good practices of truffle. It was quite common to not only that, but to do that a lot as much as you can. Like you have truffles and you put like eggs and cheese and butter and all sorts of stuff in the same Tupperware. So everything gets impregnated with the truffle and then you use it. But I have to say maybe for that very same reason that for me these truffles were weak.
You know, like yeah, because it has this, what's the name of this strong smell that has gas or eggshells and this is a sulfur in Spanish. What's sulfur? Sulfur, yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Sulfur. Yeah. And it's one of the distinctive smells of truffle. I mean, I've been in restaurants where suddenly it's like, oh my God, what's going on? There is a gas leak and nothing is going on. It was just somebody opened the Tupperware with the truffle inside, you know?
And for me that's an indicator that first of all, that it's a proper real truffle, not some kind of summer bullshit or anything. Yeah. 100%. Which by the way, I brought, because we also talk about the summer truffle issue here in the show. So I brought that up. So people were throwing questions and stuff. And so my question was like, okay, what's the deal with summer bullshit? Why does that truffle exist?
No, I said like, I mean, I was in a restaurant which is, and then the menu said truffle and I was excited because oh, oh nice truffle, you know? Like it always makes me feel excited if I'm going to have something with truffles. And then it came with this shave, truffle shave and I tried it and this is fucking summer truffle. Why would you shave summer truffle? First of all, it's not expensive. So you shouldn't treat it as gold, you know, because it's not. And second of all, it's tasteless.
So you should basically treat it like champignons, you know? You should put like four whole truffles into a dish. And I asked like, what's the deal with that? What's a proper way to use it? There was one of the experts that started like answering around, but there was another one who was like a producer and he told me like, you should never do that with summer truffle. That doesn't make any sense.
You should quarter it and throw it to a pan with butter and cook it like mushrooms or something like that. Oh really? Which makes completely, yeah, of course, because I mean, you do come and say, it's not expensive and it's not as aromatic. So why are you shaving it like super delicate? I guess people's perception of truffles is really, really narrow. I mean, like mine as well. And I think people get really swept away by the idea of a truffle.
So for them, a truffle automatically is something extremely special, very pricey. And it is, you know, if you don't know about the quality difference of truffles, you know, you it's very hard, you know, and you're kind of like, oh yeah, it's a truffle. Cool. I'm going to shave it on top. But like from one truffle to another, there's worlds in between, you know, my advice is for anyone that wants to get into the truffle.
First of all, spend money like I mean, you can get like a wonderful, super good truffle flood in anywhere in the world, like for 100 euros, you know, which is money, but it's not like crazy money, you know, like, okay, it's expensive. But I mean, that's it's like 100 years, but with one of those truffles, you can make like a super aromatic dinner for four people, you know, it's like 25 bucks each. It's not that you're buying, I don't know, like something super crazy. It's unpayable.
It's not the case. And then don't be afraid, like don't be like, oh, because this is so expensive. I'm going to shave just one little microgram and put it on top each day. Like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Eat the whole thing in one meal, you know, like go through it, get the real deal of what truffle is all about. That's something it reminds me of Thomas Keller's book, French Laundry Cookbook.
He would talk about that, like this very noble product that people are afraid of using and that they're expensive. If you get them, get them. And if you're going to eat them, get like a get your mouth full of it, you know, like be it foie gras, be it truffles, be it like all of this, you know, like get the real feel of it, understand it, like taste it. 100%, I think Thomas Keller is a good person to bring up there because he always preaches about generosity.
And I remember like reading, either I read it or I heard an interview with him. He was talking about how all good chefs are generous, that, you know, it has to feel generous for the guests, not sparse. So I often find myself telling my chefs, hey, be generous, play the whole thing, you know, do it. If you're going to put it on, put it on properly, you know, and don't skimp out. Of course, it's expensive, but like they're paying money for this, you know, like it's okay.
Of course, we could put on a little bit less, but it's much more important that they enjoy it. There is such a generosity is such an important aspect in cooking also for yourself. It's such a big aspect of this self love aspect of cooking, right? Absolutely, I mean, if you're a chef, you should feel that you're the host of a house and you're getting people to come at your place to eat your food. And if that is not, you know, done with a generous approach, I guess it's just the wrong approach.
I guess you're completely out of context, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And there's such a manic joy to be had in being in like breaking through this barrier and allowing yourself to do it, you know, of being like, No, I'm going to treat myself and I'm going to treat my friends and I'm gonna just just go maybe like a step above a little bit and fuck it. I'm going to shave the whole truffle on it, you know? I'm not like for me truffle is not like the best thing in the world, right?
I really love like truffle if it's good, but I'm not like, Oh my God, everything was truffles good. One of like the most delicious things for me is like, for example, a super simple risotto, right? You get yourself good risotto rice, you get yourself you make yourself a really nice broth, like an intense chicken broth. And then you make like a really nicely cooked with a little bit of white wine, like a white risotto base.
And then you take white truffle and you just shave a shit ton of white truffle on top of it and then you eat that, you know, with like these layers of white truffle, but you have to do exactly what you said you have to go like you really have to commit and shave on top of it, you know, you can't just put a couple of slices on there. Shave the fucking 100 euros, the whole hundred fucking euros and one seat. That's what you have to do. And it feels ridiculous in a way.
But it's so it's kind of saying like, Hey, fuck it all. Fuck it all for this for this moment. Yeah, it has to be like that to make it magical. And now I remember, actually, the problem that Thomas Keller was talking about about being super generous was caviar, you know, like, he he had which was this dish, I think it's the oyster and pearls or or or not another one that has this huge caviar and canal.
And that's where he says that there are so many dishes in so many restaurants and things where you get caviar and you get just like a, you know, like a tiny little piece of caviar on top of your nigiri. And it's like, dude, get like a fucking whole tablespoon of full caviar and put it in your mouth. Right. Like that's that's what you want to get if you're going to like a place to spend a couple of hundred of dollars for a dinner. Yeah, 100%. And also, it's the only real way to taste it.
Because you're not really good, like it might be nice having like a little bit of like a salinity sort of creaminess on top of your nigiri. It's nice. But really, if you have amazing caviar, like the only way to taste it is with a fairly big mouthful and really let it kind of coat your tongue and get the texture, get the flavor profile, the creaminess, the nuttiness. And of course, you can enjoy it like by itself, but you're never going to get the full picture. I can I can talk about that.
There's my colleagues, Jonathan, who was here on the show and Noel, who will be soon in the show as well, did for that truffle event. It was quite nice. First of all, they did like like a potato bread. It was kind of like I would describe it as a pita bread because it it souffle it like what you have this two two halves and it was like a so you have this shell and with the fermented potato, it had like this potato bread quality, which was quite nice.
And then they did like a cream that was with like a very succulent squid and squid ink kind of puree. I would describe it like that, like a like a thick cream. Then a poached quail egg in the middle and on top of it, a hollandaise and lots of truffles. And it was like a one bite thing. Super nice. That sounds very delicious. I love those sort of really like creamy, saucy, eggy, fucking one bite dishes. Really nice.
Yeah. And the squid thing was, you know, like not so expected thing to have with truffles, at least for me. Like I mean, when I used to work in Dubai, like we went through shit tons of truffle every week. Absolute fuck tons. You would get to a point and you would sell it like by the gram, you know, like a fucking drug dealer. Like people would like add it on and I would be at the pass with like a little micro scale, you know, like a little coke scale.
And and I would just shave it into a bowl on top of the scale and be like, OK, seven grams here, you know, five grams there. And you start getting super reckless with it, you know, kind of like how 50 cents is like throwing dollar bills into the club. That's kind of how it feels like at some point. I remember one time somebody ordered like a big Wagyu tomahawk steak and I had like, oh man, I don't know how it was like 20 gram piece of truffle I had left. And I told the service staff.
I was like, look, I have 20 grams of truffle left. That's all the truffle. And this guy ordered this big, I don't know, like one and a half kilo tomahawk Wagyu steak. And he was like, I just want the whole thing. Like I'll just take the whole truffle on top of the steak. And they told me they came to me at the pass and they told me and I was like, is he sure? Is he sure he wants this? It's a lot of truffle. Like it's a fuck ton of truffle.
And they're like, no, no, he's he's absolutely sure he wants the whole truffle. And I was like, OK, all right. So I went to the table to shave it because it was such a ridiculous situation. And I shaved, I think for two minutes straight, just going, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, truffle flying everywhere. But what was this like a Russian drug lord or what? You know, your regular, your regular Dubai party boy. How much was that like three thousand euros?
The bill or something like that? Yeah, you know, I mean, these guys, they like that's really nice. They you can really like work with add ons, caviar, truffles, et cetera, because there will always be people who will take it. You know, like, for example, in Berlin, you have this problem. You're like, OK, if I'm going to order truffles, are enough people going to buy it while they're good? Like, are there going to be enough people who are going to pay 100 euros extra for the main course?
Answer for me, I don't know. Like in the past, like three years is, I don't know, not so much. But there, you know, you can do you can do it all. Like I was doing for a while, I was doing Wagyu Katsu Sandoz with a white truffle coleslaw. So super simple, like super nice A5 Miyazaki Wagyu fried, rested, cut open with like a nice sauce, like a really nice sort of like coleslaw with julienned white truffles inside.
And then you cut it open, you grate some more of the truffles on top and each portion would cost like 120 euros for like a two bite sandwich. And we put it on and it became like a like a bestseller and we were selling like 20 every night. You know what goes super well with truffles since we were talking about truffles and parsley? Parsley root. Parsley root, yeah. Super, super nice. For sure. For sure. All root vegetables. That's a super nice ingredient, parsley root.
And so underused, I guess, because we just talk that parsley is something that you find everywhere and this and that and blah, blah, blah. But parsley root, I bet most people don't even know it. Absolutely. I used to think parsnip and parsley root are the same thing, but they're actually not. No, no, no. They're different. Yeah. They're pretty similar, but they're different species. It's really, really nice. Yeah. Parsley root, celeriac, all those sorts of things. Truffle.
I mean, that is a fucking winter winning combination. Yeah. And butter and that's it. They're ways to heaven.