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Gremolata: An Easy Way to Add Flavor

Have you tried gremolata?  Last week the Mellor family celebrated Lee’s birthday at The Appalachian http://Www.theappalachianrestaurant.com in Sevierville.  If you have not been there, it is one of the restaurants we highly recommend, if you are not eating at Buckhorn Inn, of course!  Anyway, Lee and I both had a lovely trout dish.  The fish was split open and deboned and cooked perfectly.  It was topped with pickled onions, fresh greens and gremolata.

Gremolata is an Italian green sauce with chopped parsley, lemon zest and garlic.  It is a close cousin to pesto sauce.  It added a zesty note to our trout, and we thought it would be delicious in a variety of dishes.  You can easily create variations on this sauce.  For example, you could substitute lime, orange or grapefruit zest for the lemon.  You might want to add cilantro, mint, sage, or another herb to the parsley.  And adding some Parmesan cheese, walnuts or toasted pine nuts would give a new, and delicious, flavor profile to this versatile topping.  If you like a bit of spice, crushed red pepper or horseradish would be a great add-in.  

Classic Gremolata

1 small bunch of parsley, rinsed and dried. (About 1 cup of loosely-packed leaves.)

1 clove of garlic

2 lemons, washed and dried

Very finely chop the parsley.  Finely grate the garlic over the parsley.  Grate the zest from the two lemons over the garlic and parsley.  Continue to chop the ingredients, mixing it all together, until the texture is very fine.  The sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for a day.  This recipe yields about 1/3 cup.

Lemon, herbs and garlic make for a flavorful sauce.

This sauce is wonderful on top of grilled meat or fish.  But you could also try it on top of a creamy bisque, roasted root vegetables, cooked greens, creamy polenta, or any other dish that needs a bright pop of flavor and color.  

Let us know how YOU use  this recipe!