Winter Tabbouleh

Sorry guys, but we’ve got another bulgur salad on our hands.

The bulgur exploration started innocently enough. I needed coarse bulgur for this delicious pilaf way back when in the summer, and it just seemed silly to buy a tiny package rather than the more cost effective LARGE package, especially because what if it was great and I wanted to make it again? (It was, and I have). And then I threw together a simple, delicious tabbouleh salad later in the summer with my meager harvest of balcony tomatoes, and that required FINE bulgur, and I applied the aforementioned logic to that purchase, too, and let’s just say there’s a lot of bulgur in my cabinets right now.

So I’ve got many ounces of coarse and fine bulgur, and I still need to feed myself lunch every day, and at this point it seems really silly to be investing in other grains with this much bulgur at my  fingertips. So I’ve been scouring my Middle Eastern cookbooks for every iteration of bulgur salad that seems remotely new and interesting. I won’t lie, the dishes I’ve made have ranged from extremely boring to solidly mediocre, but there have been a few bright spots in this bulgur extravaganza. This winter tabbouleh is one of them.

You should really use a mandoline to prepare this salad, because no one wants to get a huge, thick bite of raw fennel or raw celery root. But sliced paper thin, they actually provide some great texture and interesting flavor to the tabbouleh, and can really stand up to the dressing without wilting. Using coarse bulgur here is also key to making a grain salad that feels much more sturdy and wintry than the fine stuff that holds together the parsley and tomatoes in your summer tabbouleh.

As this is very likely my last post before Christmas, I’ll wish everyone who’s celebrating a happy holiday. I plan to share something before the New Year, and I promise that after all these bulgur salads, it’s going to be something sweet and decadent!