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Ingredients
About 1kg mussels
1 onion
Curly leafed parsley
Slat and pepper
White wine
Olive oil
Makes enough for two
It’s great looking, vibrant green, perhaps the most voluptuous of herbs.
As one of my favourite herbs, old-fashioned curly parsley is my choice for the first anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging at Kalyn’s Kitchen. She’s running a tally of the food bloggerati’s favourite herbs as part of her celebrations.
It’s not fashionable but curly parsley is better than flat Italian parsley. They say – at least Jamie Oliver does – that the flat leaf variety has better flavour. But I find it has the tang of petrol.
The curly stuff has a superior subtle flavour although it does require more washing to remove grit and dirt. And, from my garden, possibly dog urine 
It has none of the fickleness of Basil, a fair weather friend. The aroma of parsley is more complex than basil. It also keeps better once picked.
Basil is easy for anyone to like. Parsley takes time like bitter ale, wine or whisky.
A simple demonstration of its power is with mussels.
Although simple, this dish does take care and attention. A pair of pliers is useful to remove the hairy beards by which the mussels attached themselves to their host.
Jak cooked them last week and made two mistakes. One was not removing the beards properly on perhaps half the batch. Second was to fry the onion first.
This dish’s flavour comes from the mingling of wine, raw finely sliced onion, garlic if you must, and the liquor from the mussels. I’ll repeat the raw onion because it is important.
All it takes is seasoning with salt and pepper and the lid put on the pan until the mussels open.
Variations include substituting wine with cider. And adding various herbs, sometimes even cream.
But it doesn’t need it, just good old-fashioned parsley.
Less really is more.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
There must be something with dogs and parsley. At our previous residence the stuff grew like a weed on any bare surface (we had a waist-sized shrub next to the garage entrance!) and my dog would spend half an hour going around and ‘marking’ them after any bout of rain…not that you needed to know that, of course!
Yayy! I love your choice. I agree completely with you about curly parsley’s superiority over flat leaf parsley. Whenever I read in cookbooks that flat parsley has a better flavor, I say to myself “Huh?” I have both in my garden, but use the curly parsley the most. My favorite thing to use it for is tabbouli, followed by salad Shirazi. Sadly, mussels are outrageously expensive here, but I do love them.
(Ellie is too funny!)
Ellie, I do know that kind of thing and I have two of them snifing around doing it. they also eat it too!
kalyn, sad to hear mussels are so expensive but i guess you are that far from the sea. It is great in tabbouli or anything really.
I dunno, parsley and garlic are like two old mates that go to the footy every weekend, inseperable, so I guess I must. Do you open up and eat the mussels that don’t open? We do at our house - still alive!