Although a seemingly simple salad with just a handful
of ingredients, Tabbouleh can kill or kiss your taste buds.
In the West, we seem to be a little heavy-handed with
the bulghur wheat element, when it is essentially a parsley salad, meant to
cleanse the palate. However, while I love parsley, recipes calling for five
hundred grams of the stuff are overkill as far as my (admittedly, Western) palate is
concerned. Five hundred grams is about 5 large bunches of parsley - or enough
to garnish every single dish from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course,
desserts included.
I have aimed for a happy medium with this recipe,
including a few extra ingredients which obviously don’t belong in a palate
cleanser: onion and garlic are not traditional but they make sure this salad
doesn’t sit alone and unloved at a party or barbeque, but is up there showing
off what it learnt at belly-dancing class.
Don’t be tempted to use your food processor to deal
with the parsley. It will turn it into horrible green mud. To shine in this
salad, the parsley (and mint) needs to be shredded as thinly as you can
possible manage, using a sharp, sharp knife. The salad vegetables should be finely
diced or chopped so that they resemble little jewels.
For my ‘happy medium’ Tabbouleh, you will need...
475mls water
150mls freshly
squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon
finely grated lemon zest (yellow part only)
¼ teaspoon
ground cinnamon
175g bulghur
wheat
1 medium red
onion (about the size of a tennis ball), peeled and finely chopped
400g ripe
tomatoes, cut into 1cm dice
300g cucumber,
finely diced, skin included
200g flat
leafed parsley (stalks removed), washed, dried and finely shredded
10g fresh mint
leaves, finely shredded
Dressing
125mls extra
virgin olive oil
50mls freshly
squeezed lemon juice
a small clove
of garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon
freshly ground black pepper
Place the water, lemon
juice and zest, and the cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Place the bulghur wheat in
a large heatproof bowl. When the contents of the saucepan have come to the
boil, carefully pour over the bulghur wheat. Set aside until cooled.
Meanwhile, prepare the
vegetables and herbs as described in the ingredient list above.
To make the dressing, simply place the dressing
ingredients in a jam jar (or similar) with a screw-top lid and shake until
combined.
When the bulghur wheat has
absorbed most of the liquid and has cooled, drain it in a large colander or
sieve and rinse by carefully pouring about 500mls of boiling water over it to
remove any excess starch that could make the dish stodgy, and leave to drain and
cool once more.
Place the cooled bulghur
wheat in a large bowl and gently fluff the grains with a fork to separate them.
Add the herbs, vegetables and dressing and gently combine. This salad is best
made a day in advance so that the flavours have a chance to meld and mellow. It
will keep, covered, in the fridge for about 4 days.
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| For a low-cal Tabbouleh delivery system use endive leaves to scoop it up! |
Variation: add finely diced feta to the salad for an extra layer of flavour.
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