Last week I had the set in my meal again. I don’t like that. I don’t like a set at all. Decoration on the plate next to the actual dish, for me that is like smokers, Leitkultur and Helene Fischer together. If there is only a tomato, a slice of cucumber and maybe a sprig of curly parsley on the edge of the plate – yes, it still exists, that journey back in time to the 1950s – I am downright grateful to the chefs. The Chichi can at least be pushed away easily.
Long-time readers of this column know how low my tolerance threshold is in this regard. I keep coming back to the topic. Because new bad habits keep spreading: chives, rocket, sprouts, chilli threads or – my favorite hateful object – the apparently difficult to avoid thick vinegar, also called crema di balsamic vinegar. All of this is usually sprinkled, thrown or poured over the actual food without any sense or understanding. But I like Thai curry without rocket and certainly don’t need vinegar on the vanilla ice cream, no matter how sweet it is.
The set actually says everything about the people in the kitchen. There then either scheme F rules, the prevailing teaching from vocational school training or some other form of deliberate mindlessness. Why are cooks even taught to put garnishes on the plate? So that the guest also has something to look at. Yeah sure, but why aren’t they taught that their food looks good too? Not possible with German cuisine, some will now say. I beg you, but of course you can. A Wiener schnitzel that is not breaded too thick and then souffled in the pan in hot fat so that the crust turns golden brown waves is a feast for the eyes. I don’t even need a sprig of parsley. And if the schnitzel is a dark brown plate, shiny with fat, the green can’t distract my eye from it.
Incidentally, the mistake is not only made in the schnitzel kitchen, fine dining is not immune either. Let’s stick with the parsley for the sake of simplicity. The newest shit is called parsley oil. Sometimes it tastes more, sometimes less of parsley, and above all it is characterized by its color, a deep grass green. Sometimes it has dripped onto the edge of the plate, then it frames a beetroot tartare in green, streaks white tahini sauce or covers cod poached in threads. Splattering oil or jus or reductions on the plate has become a certain tradition. Sometimes they are the tastiest part of the whole set. This does not apply to parsley oil, it seldom has any significance in terms of taste.
I promise, from a gastronomic point of view, parsley green will be the Titian red of the beginning of the decade. It’s still just the better restaurants, but they are using it so inflationarily that the oil will soon be ready to buy. It is also a child of the Thermomix. With this kitchen appliance, what used to be called pesto can be transformed into a baby pulp-like mass in no time at all, from which the oil can be filtered.
And it actually goes well with everything: asparagus or risotto, chicken fricassee or mushroom soup, salmon or yoghurt ice cream – nothing that cannot be refined with a few splashes of the oil. The deep green grass is so political, it can stand for so much: a blob for more veggie on the plate, a blob for more health, a blob for a better climate – it doesn’t matter what else is floating in the garnish.
.