How To Make Tabouli

A tabouli, essentially, is an herb salad with bulgur wheat running through it. Lots of people put too much bulgur wheat, in relation to the herb, so what we've got here for you is flat-leaf parsley which has been finely chopped, fresh mint, just again finely chopped, one clove of garlic, a little salt and pepper, and then bulgur wheat, we've got about fifty grams here, and this has been cooked in salted water. The instructions on the packet, when you buy them from supermarkets, tell you not to cook it, they tell you just to rehydrate it as they would for couscous, but in our experience, we find it's better to cook it in boiling water, then when it's soft to eat then strain it up, and then refresh it quickly with cold water, to cease the cooking any further.

We're going to add three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, make sure it's a really good one, and with that, the juice of a couple of lemons. And in this pot, we have some ground cinnamon and ground allspice, and some finely chopped spring onion and finely chopped tomatoes. We've de-seeded them, there's three here, and really, really good tomatoes, you want tomatoes that are full of flavor, don't you? So, to put it together, you literally just mix all the ingredients, so that's the bulgur wheat going on which has been cooked, quickly rinsed under cold water and then spread out to dry.

Then, finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped mint, make sure you take the leaves for decoration on the top, so make sure you take the leaves off the stalks there. And the finely chopped tomatoes - really good, flavorsome tomatoes, and spring onion, finely chopped, the allspice and the ground cinnamon. Really simple dish to make.

That gives it a lovely flavor, that one. And then, this is extra virgin olive oil mixed with some lemon juice, already in there, little bit of salt and pepper, and then, we've got a small garlic clove which we're going to put in - you don't want to over-garlic it but you do want some for some flavor. Just a tiny bit.

And then, just mix that together. Now, you leave that to let the flavors develop. Now, it's traditionally served by the Lebanese as part of Meze, so there are lots of other dishes you can add to it, and you can serve it with flatbread, which is really nice, or you can serve it with another dish.

And that's how you make tabouli. .