chilli and gerkin salsa verde

If you live in Houghton Bay, it’s possible that you will have so much flat leaf parsley that, at times, you fear you will wake up and be unable to open the front door – the whole house will be suffocated in a giant parsley bomb. Making salsa verde in these conditions is extremely satisfying… because you get to use up a couple of handfuls of the stuff in one go. Plus it tastes great. Especially with fish.

Nutrition wise, parsley is something of a superfood in it’s own right. It’s also a great way to get the super-duper health benefits of raw garlic on board without smelling too scary (parsley is a natural breath freshener). So since living in parsleyville I make a lot of salsa verde. As with anything, you can be experimental … and your life will just be that little bit more interesting because of it. Not as life changing as, say, a 3 month trip to India, but, you know, better than slopping out some shop bought tartar for the gazillionth time.

To make parsley, chilli, gerkin, salsa verde you chop up a few handfuls of flat leaf parsley with the zest and juice of a lemon, a grated clove of raw garlic, some chopped gerkins (you know you have some lurking in the fridge from the last time you made burgers.. and if you don’t leave them out / use cucumber / capers..), finely chopped fresh chilli and a good slug of olive oil. That’s all. It’s looks rather lovely if you have a pink bowl like mine, but the colour of the bowl really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

lemon roast salmon with chilli and cucumber salsa verde, giant sweet potato chips and broccoli

I’m going through a bit of a salsa verde craze at the moment. Of course it helps that we have more flat leaf parsley than I could dream of uses for. I’d never made it until I read a recipe in a sweet little book called ‘Recipes and Lessons from a Delicious Cooking Revolution’ by Alice Waters – it’s one of the Penguin paperback ‘Great Food’ series that makes a nice contrast to big glossy photo recipe books (which, of course, I also love) because it’s tiny and light and cheap and feels like an novella in the hand. Her recipe, which I’d guess is pretty standard, uses olive oil, grated garlic clove, lemon zest, chopped capers and chopped flat leaf parsley. I also added a tiny super-hot red chilli and some cucumber. One of the disadvantages of cooking a family meal is that you can’t just throw in hot chillies with wild abandon but I guessed (correctly) my guys wouldn’t be getting stuck into the salsa verde part of the meal any time soon.

Had with salmon roasted with lemon halves (squeezed over then roasted in the tray). Giant sweet potato chips baked with olive oil, garlic gloves and some wedges of beetroot that needed using up. Steamed broccoli and sweetcorn.

Lemon roast salmon, roast kumara and beetroot, salsa verde and broccoli and fresh corn

Roasted kumara and beetroot plain with a little salt and olive oil (so good to puree up for J). Huge fillet of salmon roasted with a couple of lemon halfs squeezed over and thrown in and some salt and pepper.

Salsa verde (chopped flat leaf parsley from garden, zest and juice of a lemon, grated glove of NZ garlic (the chinese garlic is rubbish at moment) chopped capers and olive oil.

pan fried hoki with lemon verbena salsa verde

Pan fried hoki fillets coated in egg and gluten free crumbs – good result for me as managed not to over-cook the fish. Got half way through the salsa verde; chopped flat leaf parsley (which grows like a week in our garden) grated garlic bulb, salt , pepper , chopped capers , olive oil .. then realised I’d forgotten lemons again… looked round the garden hoping the struggling lemon tree might have miraculously spawned a juicy lemon and then decided to try substituting the lemon zest for finely chopped lemon verbena leaves – worked well.

Had this with oven chips (from the freezer much to the kids delight) peas and fresh corn.