Being of Lebanese origin, one thing that has differentiated me
from my peers is growing up eating Lebanese food all my life. And I noticed
whenever I'd mention “Lebanese food” to others, the first thing that pops into their
minds is tabbouleh, the infamous Lebanese salad dish. It has been a signature Lebanese
dish for many generations, known for being very tasty as well as healthy.
So when I decided I wanted to blog my recipes and love for
cooking, I knew my kick-off had to be tabbouleh, which may seem cliché, but I assure
you this is not the typical “simplified” version of tabbouleh, that you can
find so easily if you typed into Google “how to make tabbouleh ”. Whereby they
will basically tell you to get all the necessary ingredients, chop them up, and
mix them in a bowl.
I wanted to make this
demonstration special and personalized, by adding detail, and some of my cooking
“secrets”, that a lot of traditional Lebanese chefs probably do, but you wouldn’t
see it in an internet recipe. Therefore, I’ve taken pictures of every step within
the process of making tabbouleh, to aid you with making it as special as a
professional Lebanese restaurant’s tabbouleh, or as delicious as being invited
to a dinner party at my house ;)
Tabbouleh is loved by anyone who has tried it, I’ve never
meet anyone whose said they don’t like it. It can be enjoyed as a starter, a
side dish with a meal or a healthy snack. I usually make it for a BBQ or a
dinner party, it’s certainly a show-stopper, and I have had people tell me my tabbouleh
is the best they’ve ever had.
This recipe serves four people, and there are two different
serving methods I’ve included pictures of. One of which is just in a big bowl,
decorated with romaine lettuce, to scoop into your plate as you please. Another
is the tabbouleh stuffed inside pieces of the lettuce, so they look like little
cute boats. Both are very presentable for an occasion, yet I find the latter a
more innovative method for distributing.
Ingredients:
>One large bunch of parsley
>Five stems of mint leaves
>Salt
>A pinch of allspice (if you don’t have this you
can substitute it with cinnamon or cumin)
>A quarter of a cup of olive oil
>One juicy lemon
>One table spoon of whole grain crushed wheat
(borghol), using whole grain rather than white borghol is better, as white borghol
tends to soak-up and expand too much, making it soggy and not as rigid as borghol
should be in a tabbouleh
>Half of a white onion
>One large ripe
tomato
>Romaine lettuce (optional)
How to make:
Firstly, get the bunch of parsley and arrange them in a way
such that the leaves are on one end and the ends of the stems on another,
horizontally in front of you, all tied with a rubber band.
And using a very
sharp knife, the sharpest you can find, like a butchers knife (be careful!),
chop up the parsley very finely, as
fine as you can. Go over it back and forth while chopping to get them as fine
as possible. Don’t worry about cutting up the stalk parts too with the leaves,
because during the washing process the stalk parts will go.
Then, in order to get rid of the stems, you need to get a
bowl of clean water and put your chopped up parsley inside, and mix them a
little bit. You will notice the stems will sink to the bottom and the leaves
will rise and float at the top, this is very convenient as then you can skim
the leaves that are floating at the top and put them in a sieve, leaving the
stems behind.
Some people will wash
the parsley before cutting, while still in its bunch, but this will make it
difficult to get rid of the stems completely. Although some people don’t mind
having pieces of the stems in their tabbouleh, it is not ideal for a classy, beautifully
flavoured, and rich tabbouleh. Therefore, you should wash in my method, so that
your tabbouleh can be made entirely of parsley leaves, without any stems, making
your tabbouleh special.
After this wash and separation, place your chopped leaves in
a sieve to allow them to drain. Make sure you use the finest sieve you have, as
the leaves are cut to very small pieces, you don’t want them to go through. Leave
them for as long as possible, so they can be completely dry, you do not want a watery
tabbouleh. You can pick up the parsley and squeeze them to help drain out the
water, or get a spoon and press down on them on top of the sieve. Then leave
them for about an hour.
While they dry, chop the tomato in very fine cubes. I cut it
in thin slices first, then in a chequered way, each slice individually.
Next, chop the half white onion very finely, so fine that you
won’t be able to see obvious pieces of onion in the final mix with the rest of
the ingredients. Then dash half a teaspoon of salt on top of your chopped onion,
with a tiny pinch of allspice (the most mildest hint, you’re not supposed to
really taste pepper in your tabbouleh, it’s more like a tiny mysterious kick), and
mix the salt and allspice with the chopped onion. This will reduce the sharpness of the onion, so that if you were to eat
a piece of onion it doesn’t make you squint, yet still bringing out the flavour
of the onion into the salad by releasing the sweetness. This is a great tip for
whenever you put onion into any salad, as to reduce its natural sharpness, yet
remaining tasty.
Then in a small bowl, or in a lemon juicer, squeeze a whole lemon.
Then add a small pinch of salt to the lemon juice, and the table spoon of
borghol, as well as the quarter of a cup of olive oil, and then mix them all
together. Allow this mix to soak for at
least half an hour. This is so that your borghol can soften, so when you’re
serving the tabbouleh, the borghol is not too hard, leaving you feeling like
you are eating gravel. Some people soak the borghol in water beforehand, but
this is not ideal as then you get too much water into the tabbouleh, making the
lemon juice sink into the bottom. Whereas soaking the borghol in lemon will
give them a lemon taste, helping to distribute the lemon flavour evenly across
the tabbouleh when all the ingredients are mixed together, making the whole
salad delicious.
The last ingredient you should chop is the mint, as mint
goes bitter and black after chopped, so it’s better to chop the mint and add it
to the tabbouleh just before serving. Pluck the mint leaves off the stem and
soak them in water to clean them, then pick them up and squeeze them to rinse
out the water. Then chop them very finely, as the picture shows.
The reason I keep
repeating “very fine” is as the finer the ingredients are cut, the tastier the tabbouleh
will be; you will get more flavour in each spoon full.
Now put everything together in a bowl (the chopped parsley, tomato,
onion with the salt and pepper, the lemon juice and the other ingredients in
their bowl, and the mint) and give them all a thorough mix. You have made your tabbouleh,
give yourself a pat on the back.
You can then decorate the salad using lettuce, I personally recommend
romaine lettuce with tabbouleh as it’s a flavoursome type of lettuce, and
shaped conveniently as to place tabbouleh in them to make tabbouleh “boats”, a
fun way to enjoy.
recipe by Olah and Zaina Hakim
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