Tabbouleh

Ingredients

• Flat-leaf parsley — three large bunches200 g
• Mint30 g
• Fine bulgur40 g
• Tomatoes — finely diced4
• Spring onion4
• Lemons — juiced2
• Olive oil60 ml
• Ground allspice½ tsp
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the bulgur and pour the juice of one lemon over it. Leave it to swell for fifteen minutes.

   15 min

2. 2

   Wash the parsley well in advance and dry it thoroughly — an hour on a cloth is not too much. Strip the thick stems and chop it fine but without pulverising it.

   12 min

3. 3

   Dice the tomatoes small and salt them separately: the juice they give up goes into the bulgur.

   5 min

4. 4

   Mix everything with the juice of the second lemon, the oil and the allspice. Let it stand ten minutes before serving.

   12 min

About the dish

Western versions turned tabbouleh into a grain salad with herbs in it. In Lebanon the proportion is the reverse: a couple of spoons of bulgur to a large bunch of parsley, where it provides texture rather than substance.

The parsley is chopped with a knife and must be dry. Wet herbs bruise under the blade and darken, and within half an hour the salad turns slimy.

The bulgur is not boiled. Fine grain softens in the juice of the tomatoes and lemon within fifteen minutes, and that is what makes the salad one thing rather than several.

Worth knowing

• — The salad lives about two hours. After that the parsley weeps and the texture is gone; tabbouleh is not made ahead.
• — It wants more lemon than seems right. Acidity is the main flavour here, not a correction.
• — It is served with lettuce or cabbage leaves instead of a fork: they are used to scoop it up.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

210 kcal

Protein

5 g

Fat

14 g

Carbs

19 g

More from Lebanon

• Baked kibbeh — Two layers of bulgur and lamb with a filling of mince and pine nuts between them.