Tabbouleh

I've never eaten Tabbouleh in a restaurant but Harsh has, and he absolutely loves it. I've been promising to make some for him at home for months now.
Finally a couple of days ago I tried my hand at this Lebanese salad made with bulgur, mint, parsley, spring onions and tomato.
This salad is especially refreshing when served cold on a warm summer day.

Ingredients:


Bulgur wheat - 2 cups
Flat left parsley - 200 gms
Mint leaves - 50 gms
Spring onions - 4
Tomatoes - 2
Freshly squeezed lemon juice - 1 lemon
Olive oil - 4 tbsps
Pepper - to taste
Salt - to taste
Cold water - 2 cups

Method:


Wash the bulgur with cold water. Drain it and place in a large bowl and pour cold water over it. Leave it to stand until the bulgur has absorbed all the water and the grains have swollen.
Now, add the lemon juice and olive oil to the bulgur and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.
Finely chop the parsley, mint, spring onions and tomatoes and mix into the bulgur.
Serve cold. 

Bulgur Salad

We've been planning to do a barbecue in the park all month but it's been a very rainy summer. Finally, we decided that since we hadn't got any respite from the rain in weeks we'd go ahead with a little barbecue at home with our electric table grill.
We bought some marinated chicken from Lidl, the German supermarket. (Their marinated meats are pretty good and also very reasonably priced.)

 I decided to make some salad at home as an accompaniment to our grilled chicken. I wanted to make something that's healthy as well as tasty, simple and yet filling and so I decided to make us some Bulgur Salad. The recipe is simple but you need to prepare a few hours in advance.
 Here it is:

Ingredients:


Bulgur wheat - 2 cups
Chicken bouillon cube - 1 1/2
Water - 2 cups
Chopped tomato - 1
Chopped cucumber - 1/2
Chopped carrot - 1
Chopped yellow bell pepper - 1
Finely chopped parsley - 2 tbsps
Lemon juice - 1/2 a lemon
Freshly ground garlic powder - 1/4 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1/4 tsp
Freshly ground pepper - to taste

Method:


Wash the bulgur wheat with cold water and drain completely.
Add one bouillon cube to two cups of water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the bulgur. Let it stand for 45-60 minutes.
Mix the bulgur with the chopped vegetables and the parsley.
 In a small bowl whisk together the lemon juice, garlic powder, chilli powder and half of the chicken bouillon cube. Pour this over the salad and mix well.
Sprinkle a little freshly ground pepper.
Refrigerate the salad for a couple of hours and serve cold.

Vegetarians can replace the chicken bouillon cubes with vegetarian ones. The bouillon cubes usually have a lot of salt so I haven't added any extra salt but you may need to vary the quantity of cubes you use as per taste.