Photo Credit: Ari LeVaux
I have a farmer friend who loves all vegetables but, until recently, had unresolved issues with parsley. He liked it. He respected it. He grew and sold it to customers he liked and respected. But, despite cooking dinner every night for 30 years, sometimes for a literal farm of interns, he almost never cooked with parsley.
“I haven’t actualized parsley,” he recalls complaining while harvesting and bunching parsley for market. “I need to find a way to use it more.”
A member of his crew told him about a chimichurri taco in Los Angeles that he'd recently eaten, and that's all my friend needed to hear. Days later, Chimichurri Pad Thai was born.
Parsley-based or verde sauces have long been popular in Spain and Italy, and immigrants from those nations brought their seeds and sauces to Argentina, where salsa verde mingled with steak, aji chile pepper and papas fritas to become chimichurri.
As a taco sauce, chimichurri was a natural fit; green is one of two acceptable colors for taco sauce. But my farmer friend, who is fluent in Thai and an expert at Thai cooking, sees food through a Southeast Asian lens.
Most traditional chimichurri recipes call for red wine vinegar, but my parsley-loving pal uses rice vinegar in his. When I arrived one night, that mutant taco sauce had been tossed into a pile of noodles, along with roasted vegetables. I christened it Chimichurri Pad Thai, a hybrid of north and south, east and west.
“Just don't call it Pad Thai,” my friend said, with sudden concern for the literal meaning of words. “To do Pad Thai correctly is really hard," he explained, detailing the noodle-frying minutia behind the real deal. This dish, he said, is called Goy-dtee-ow Pak-Chee, which means “Room Temperature Noodles with Parsley.”
Now, I was the one with the parsley problem, because I don’t love the name Room Temperature Noodles with Parsley, no matter how accurate and descriptive the name. Chimichurri Pad Thai, while technically inaccurate, conveys an image that is closer to reality. A lie that tells the truth.
“Authenticity is a moving target,” according to Daniel Hernandez, Styles reporter for The New York Times, previously with L.A. Taco, where he covered So-Cal news, culture and food. After hearing him speak on a recent panel, I called Hernandez for his thoughts on the existence and value of authenticity in food. True to form, he told a story about a taco: the Korean taco, to be exact, invented by Roy Choi.
“I’m sure the first time he made a Korean taco, people told him it wasn’t authentic,” Hernandez said. “Ten years later, he has this empire of Korean tacos, and the Korean taco is authentic to L.A.”
In other words, I surmise, calling it chimichurri or Pad Thai depends on who—or which traditions—you are willing to throw under the bus. “You have to kind of read the room,” Hernandez says.
When my friend made a trip to the cooler, I took a quick read of the dining room, and I determined the coast was clear to try those noodles. Grabbing a fork, I quickly steered an awkwardly large bite into my mouth. It was heavenly. The supple noodles held onto the vibrant green sauce and roasted vegetable chunks, all of which were chewed together and swallowed much too quickly.
I decided to agree to any terms my friend demanded, including what not to call it. Enough is enough. The parsley problem ends here.
Parsley Noodles
The chimichurri sauce should be made with the freshest of parsley, my friend insists. Once the sauce is made, it will improve by sitting overnight.
Serves 4
1 16-ounce package thin rice noodles (“rice stick”)
1 large (farmers market size) bunch flat-leaf parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup water
1 lb. vegetables, such as broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower, carrots, cut into ¾-inch pieces or smaller
Preheat oven to 425. Toss the vegetables in ¼ cup of olive oil and ½ teaspoon salt. Spread them evenly over a flat pan, then roast. Give them one good stir after about 10 minutes and roast another 10 or so until done.
Add 1/2 cup of oil to a blender or food processor, along with the garlic, vinegar, ½ teaspoon of salt and water. Blend until smooth. Add the parsley, blend again. Stop well before it's homogenized, when you can still see the leaf particles. Let it sit. If you can do this step the night before, all the better.
Heat a pot of water to boil and add the rice noodles. Turn off the heat and stir the noodles briefly to tease them all apart. After about two minutes, fish out a noodle and test it. It should be just on the al dente side of perfect. Keep tasting every minute or so until it's there.
When the noodles are perfectly done, dunk them in a pot of cold water to rinse off the starch. Drain the noodles and set aside.
When the vegetables are done, it’s time to assemble the dish.
In a large mixing bowl, use your hands to work the final ¼ cup of oil into the noodles like applying hair conditioner. Then gently coax the chimichurri and vegetables into the noodles. Don’t overmix, overwork or overthink the noodles. Serve at room temperature.
