Today’s concoction was tabouli. I didn’t set out to make it — while it’s good, it isn’t necessarily a dish that stands on it’s own or something I want to eat all week. However, it happened to fit the bill since I had on hand a bunch of parsley from my ceviche. I picked up some tomatoes and wheat bulgur, and was on my way. Wheat bulgur is ground whole wheat that has been parboiled to make it fast-cooking, and it’s used in many Mediterranean dishes like this one.

I started with this recipe from Epicurious , since it seemed pretty straight forward and called for stuff I already had. I had to add a bit more than the called-for amount of lemon juice, since my bulgur wasn’t getting soft enough, but other than that, it worked well. The olive oil doesn’t overpower the dish, which is a problem I’ve had in other versions. Overall it came out really well, and I’ll eat it for lunch a few days this week, topped with some feta and maybe some black olives.

Next time, this recipe looks pretty interesting — uses more herbs, including dill and basil, which probably add some other interesting flavor components.

Edit: I had the tabouli today for lunch, on top of some cooked grains (barley and wheat berries) with some feta on top. It made a great salad and I’ll definitely make it again.

Side note: I’m also learning as I go how to take good pictures of food. This picture clearly has way too shallow of a depth-of-field, so next time I’ll go with a narrower aperture to bring more of the dish into focus.

Originally posted April 12th, 2010