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‘Such an Italian flavour’

Parsley and garlic…The mixture has such an Italian flavour. It has become a joke in our house that whenever I am wondering what to cook – ‘Shall I do this? Shall I do that?’ – Plaxy always tells me, ‘Just do your parsley and garlic!’ She knows that whatever I do, I will use them, and also that by the time I have stopped talking and finished chopping, I will have decided what I am going to cook.

Every morning in the restaurant kitchen, one of our jobs is to chop parsley and garlic, ready to sprinkle into dishes whenever needed. We put the garlic cloves on a chopping board and squash them to a rough paste with the back of a knife. Then we put the parsley on top and chop it quite finely, so that the crushed garlic is chopped too. That way the garlic becomes almost a pulp, and it releases its flavours into the parsley and vice versa.

By parsley, I mean flat-leaf parsley, not the curly sort that was once the only kind available in the UK. The first time I saw curly parsley, I thought it looked beautiful – but then it was the nouvelle cuisine era.

Now I can’t imagine cooking with anything else but the flat-leaf variety, which has a much more refined flavour – though I have had a few discussions about the merits of curly parsley with Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant. A big champion of English food, and one of the few chefs I know who loves to use the curly variety, he persuaded me to try it chopped in a salad, and it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.