If you want to diversify your regular menu of cold snacks, it's time to pay attention to popular recipes of other nations. Some of them require elaborate excesses and rare ingredients. For example, today we will master the Arabic salad “Tabule”, which is quite exotic and at the same time simple to execute.
On the basis of what is such a dish prepared?
In dishes of Arabic cuisine, bulgur is often used (steamed crushed wheat groats that do not require cooking), so in our recipe we will use it. Another “Tabule” is made from barley, rice and couscous. Connoisseurs and admirers of the dish, who were lucky enough to taste it in several variations at once, in most opinions are inclined to the variant of bulgur grits.
How to make Tabule salad: recipe with photo
To begin with, we will evaluate our capabilities and transfer them to our own needs. If we need an easy-to-prepare, non-nutritious, and also a vegetarian dish, then such a salad is just made for us. As ingredients we need:
- Krupa Bulgur - half a glass;
- 2 ripe tomatoes;
- onion feather - 100 g;
- a large bunch of parsley;
- lemon - 1 pc.;
- olive oil - 4 tbsp. spoons;
- salt.
Cooking process
Some lovers, while preparing the Tabule salad, nevertheless boil bulgur and then wash it. In this case, we will not depart from the Arab tradition, and yet we will only steam the grits. Moreover, boiling water in a container is enough to fill so much that the water hides grains by only 1 cm. Very soon, the mass will swell and become usable.
At this very time, we begin to chop the parsley. There should be a lot of parsley, from about a pound, and in the finished form the green mass should visually exceed Bulgur in its quantity. You need to chop the parsley finely and finely, so we arm ourselves with the bowl of the combine and trust this process to the machine. Chives , on the other hand, are traditionally fixed with a knife. Fragrant rings will bring aesthetics of taste and a good addition to the appearance of Tabule salad.
We take a salad bowl or a bowl, put chopped parsley and onion there, then the line comes to the tomatoes. We will cut them as small as possible particles, it is best if you peel the peel from a round vegetable before cutting. It is easier to do this when the tomato is placed in boiling water for several minutes. Then the peel will crack and will be cleanable without any effort.
Sliced tomatoes are also sent in a bowl to the green mass. We begin to add the swollen cereal a little bit, stirring the salad all the time. We also make sure that the amount of cereal does not exceed the amount of chopped parsley. If we have steamed too much bulgur, it can be put in the refrigerator and subsequently used as a dressing in soup.
All components are thoroughly mixed, salted, sprinkled with lemon juice and seasoned with olive oil. The original Lebanese salad “Tabule” is almost ready, it remains to decorate it with a few leaves of mint.
Some recommendations
Arabic cuisine has its own subtleties, wisdom and traditions. To prepare a real Tabule salad with bulgur, you must strictly adhere to certain rules:
- Use only small bulgur for salads - a variety called kofelik.
- After washing, the ingredients are always dried, this applies to both herbs and cereals.
- Before steaming, a few drops of olive oil are added to the bulgur, mixing the composition.
- In all salads of the Middle Eastern cuisine, the ingredients are cut as finely as possible.
- Lemon juice is always sent to the salad in front of olive oil. This is done so that the greens crunch on the teeth.
- Tabule salad with bulgur can be served either as an independent dish or as a side dish for meat dishes.
Variations on a Theme
Ardent supporters of meat-filled dishes can sleep peacefully while there is a French version of the snack. After all, it is cooked with fried pieces of chicken breast. Let's look at such a more bourgeois recipe. This Tabule salad is based on couscous due to the fact that this cereal is most combined with meat ingredients. Couscous used to be made from millet, but now it has become popular to cook it from whole wheat grits.
As ingredients for a real bourgeois salad, we need:
- chicken breast - 1 piece;
- couscous - half a glass;
- sweet blue onions - 1 piece;
- one small eggplant;
- one bell pepper (preferably red)
- lemon - 3 pieces;
- zucchini;
- salt;
- olive oil;
- spices (tarragon, basil, cilantro).
As you can see, the French salad "Taboule", the recipe of which we are now considering, contains a sufficient amount of herbs. Do not be lazy and find the whole list of ingredients in the store or on the market, and the result will exceed even the wildest expectations.
This dish is positioned as special for true aesthetes and gourmets. Cooking time (in connection with the roasting of each ingredient separately from each other) is more than one hour.
We start frying vegetables
When the eggplant, onion, sweet pepper and zucchini are peeled and chopped, they need to be fried (each component separately) in a small amount of olive oil. Tabule salad, the recipe of which we are presenting, does not tolerate the oil remaining from frying in its composition. Therefore, we discard the fried vegetables in a colander and let the oil drain properly.
Steamed couscous
We will not begin to cook cereals, as in the previous recipe, but will be steamed with boiling water or broth. Before steaming couscous, add salt and a little olive oil to the saucepan, then mix everything.
Olive oil back in business
Our bourgeois salad “Tabule” will not do without fried pieces of chicken breast. 10-15 minutes on a good fire, a little salt, olive oil and the participation of magic hands - and golden pieces will be ready to replenish a strange snack.
Simple salad dressing
Swollen couscous is ready to fill a salad bowl with itself, vegetables have gotten rid of excess fat, and the meat has cooled. It's time to start preparing a dressing, especially since it consists of only three components. Mix the juice manually squeezed from lemons cut in half with olive oil and salt.
It remains only to mix all the ingredients with each other, pour Tabule salad with lemon dressing and garnish with herbs. Before serving, the appetizer can optionally be cooled.
Conclusion
Be sure to cook at home the Lebanese version of the dish, which will force guests to rush to the table from the doorway. A thin and strong, fresh and fragrant mixture of aromas of peppermint, parsley and green onions will drive crazy the seasoned gourmet. If the greens for the salad was not just plucked from the garden, it is better to saturate it with moisture, lowering it in cold water for 15 minutes. Then dry and put into action.
Enjoy your meal!