Your recipes: parsley

Gardeners share family favourites.

PARSLEY SALAD

JILL CHOY was given this recipe by a her Sri Lankan nurse Ganga, who looked after Jill following an injury. Ganga came in twice a week to prepare her meals and Jill soon became hooked on Sri Lankan dishes, including this parsley salad. It’s a flexible recipe so Jill tends to add more tomato and whatever else she might have to hand. It’s great as a side with fish, curry or any spicy food and is even better when made the day before and refrigerated overnight, allowing the flavours to develop. Jill lives in a retirement village and has a cool little container garden going on. She grows flat-leaf parsley in a sunny spot, uses a good fertiliser around it, keeps it well watered and leaves it to seed.

Ingredients • 1 heaped tablespoon coconut flakes • good handful parsley, finely chopped • ½ red onion, finely chopped • ½ tomato, finely chopped

• 1 green chilli or capsicum, finely chopped

• salt and pepper to taste • juice ½ lemon, or extra to taste

Place the coconut in a small dish and cover with water. Allow to soften then heat in the microwave in 30-second bursts to absorb excess water. Mix with the remaining ingredients. Serves 6 as a side

GRILLED LAMB CUTLETS WITH PARSLEY CHEESE CRUMBLE

DIANA SHORT lives on an urban section in Northcote, Auckland with her adult son Kane. When it comes to parsley, Italian is the only way to go for them both and they planted a punnet of six Italian parsley plants in a sunny part of the garden in January this year into Tui Essentials Vegetable Mix, covered it with insect netting and it has grown abundantly with no need for sprays.

They find that using parsley in the crumb makes the lamb chops more flavoursome. Serve them with some steamed vegetables sprinkled with more chopped fresh parsley.

Ingredients • 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs

• 100g tasty cheddar cheese or cumin seed cheese, grated • small handful Italian parsley, chopped • salt and pepper to taste

• 12 lamb cutlets

Combine the breadcrumbs, cheese, parsley and seasoning.

Preheat the grill to high. Place the cutlets on a grilling rack and grill for 3 minutes on one side. Turn the cutlets over and divide the crumble mixture between them.

Grill for a further 3-4 minutes until the lamb is cooked and the topping is golden. Serves 4

PESTO CASTRATO (PESTO WITHOUT THE NUTS!)

Aucklander LIZ SMITH lives on a clifftop at Muriwai beach, so her garden is subject to a lot of weather, especially wind. Liz is six years into her project of replanting the garden with lots of tough and hardy natives to attract the birds and survive the extremes of wild west coast weather. Flax, ko¯ whai, pu¯ riri, po¯ hutukawa, leptospermum, cabbage trees and mingimingi all do well in the coastal environment. There is one sheltered spot, which is where Liz grows the parsley (and other herbs) for this recipe.

Liz was introduced to this sauce by her friend and Gourmet Gannet Bakery owner Alli Pirie who served it over roasted veges. Since then, Liz has made it her own – including coming up with the clever name – and it’s become a family favourite that her sisters Barbara and Merren and mother Margaret regularly make too. The sauce is lighter and fresher than traditional pesto and it’s great for spooning over meat, chicken, fish, veges and salads, dolloped onto sandwiches and swirled through soup. If you don’t want to use all parsley you could use one handful each of parsley, coriander and basil, depending on what you have available.

Ingredients • 3 handfuls parsley • 1 garlic clove, chopped • juice of 1 lemon • salt and pepper to taste • chilli flakes (optional)

• olive oil

Put all the ingredients into a stick blender container with a good glug of olive oil and blend, continuing to add the olive oil

until you reach your desired consistency. The pesto will keep in the fridge for about a week. Makes about ½ cup

STUFFED TOMATOES WITH PARSLEY

Wind can be a fairly major bugbear in MAUREEN BAKULICH’S rural garden but she’s found the perfect spot for her parsley – so much so that it just seeds there year after year and grows like a miniature lawn.

Maureen loves to use the parsley in this tomato recipe, which is a fairly freestyle one, meaning you can alter the ingredients and quantities to suit what you have. Basil, for example, works well alongside the parsley but not too much or it will overpower everything else.

This dish is lovely served with rice and when Maureen serves it to visitors as a side dish, it’s always a hit.

Ingredients • 6 large tomatoes

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted • 75g grated cheese (Mary uses half parmesan, half Edam) • 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley • 1 cup fresh white or wholemeal breadcrumbs • 2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion

Preheat the oven to 170ºC.

Halve the tomatoes and scoop out the middles into a bowl. Stir through the butter, cheese, parsley, breadcrumbs and red onion. Spoon the filling back into the hollowed-out tomatoes and place in a dish. Place the dish in a larger roasting dish, pour in water so it comes about threequarters way up the side of the tomato dish and bake for about 45 minutes. Serves 6

ITALIAN DRESSING

Cold, wet and windy conditions don’t faze Southland gardener BRONWYN GRAHAM, who has been gardening her one-acre semi-rural section for 13 years now. Rather than railing against tricky conditions, her “let nature do its thing” philosophy seems to work a treat.

Basil, for example, works well alongside the parsley but not too much of it or it will overpower everything else.

When it comes to both her curly and flat-leaf parsley plants, she lets them seed and leaves them be, only intervening if she wants it in a new place – and even then it’s just a case of breaking off the seed heads to lie them in the area.

The dressing recipe came from her mum and Bronwyn particularly appreciates how eco-friendly it is to be using produce from the garden while also reducing plastic consumption by not needing store-bought dressings in plastic bottles.

Ingredients • 1/3 cup vinegar • 1/ cup

3 olive oil • 1 tablespoon lemon juice •1 tablespoon chopped parsley • 2 teaspoons chopped chives • 1 clove garlic, crushed

• ½ teaspoon dry mustard • black pepper

Place all the ingredients in a jar, cover and shake well to combine. Once made, it can stay in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Makes about ½ cup