10 September 2006 Blog Home : September 2006 : Permalink
Francis, my good sir, tabouleh is 90% chopped leafy and 10% couscous, all of it drowned in spices and oil (olive oil, OF COURSE!!! I am soooo jealous of your olive trees, mister!)
How do you add tabouleh as an "ingredient" to salad? Gonna have to find/post a photo of tabouleh and see if we are having a language/translation problem here *grin* I make couscous, but not tabouleh. Don't like the mint (and mint leaves are an essential ingredient in authentic tabouleh).
In her new response she says taboulé looks like this:So DirtyDingus is having a little confusion, methinks. No, I haven't gone off and made a tabouleh salad--I hate mint and the minced mint leaves are pretty much the "secret ingredient" in tabouleh. You might as well leave out the lemon (*ack*)
There are definitely different styles and recipes for this traditional Lebanese salad, but the image (stolen from the StockFood web site) is what I'm used to seeing when hear "tabouleh." Maybe a slightly more green level on the proportions of parsley/mint to couscous. This one is heavy on the couscous (which I love).
And all becomes clear because I think taboule can also look like this picture of one the boss prepared a couple of days ago and which we still have lying about in the fridge. OK it has green bits in it - cucumber in this case - but it isn't green overall and it definitely isn't 90% green leaves. I've had tomato taboulé, various red, yellow and orange coloured taboulés etc. Since these recipes all come from France via N Africa it is entirely possible that somewhere on the path they have become corrupted from the pure original but when I'm talking taboule what I mean is couscous plus some mint / lemon flavouring plus some other ingredients TBD and about 50% of it being couscous.