Summer Vegetable Taboulé, the French Weeknight Staple

Salut! It's Yoko, your home cook.

Have you ever heard of taboulé?

Today I'm sharing a recipe for taboulé, one of France's classic everyday dishes.

Taboulé is a parsley salad popular in Arab countries like Lebanon and Syria, made with finely chopped parsley and vegetables plus bulgur (cracked wheat).
You'll also see it spelled tabbouleh or tabouli.

It's eaten all the time in France, too, and even neighborhood supermarkets like Monoprix always stock several kinds.
What would it be in Japan... hmm?
Maybe something like a choregi salad (a Korean-style crunchy salad with a sesame dressing)? (It's not quite the same, though, lol.)

Couscous, the Key to French Taboulé

Bulgur is hard to find in Japan, so I'm using couscous this time.
(Plenty of French taboulés are made with couscous, too.)

Couscous is a tiny granular pasta made from durum wheat.

It has such a long history that it appears in an Arabic cookbook from the mid-13th century, and in northwest Africa the word means "the best food" or simply "a meal."
It is thought to have originated as a staple of the Berber people in places like Morocco and Tunisia, where at first it was a simple dish of couscous mixed with melted butter.
It then spread to many countries and is now eaten across a very wide area, including the Middle East, Italy, France and Brazil,
with all sorts of styles that blend with the local cuisine.

Taboulé Ingredients (serves about 6)

Couscous: 300 g
Boiling water: 250 ml
Cucumbers: 2
Cherry tomatoes: 15
Red onion: 1/2
Raisins: 3 tablespoons
Flat-leaf parsley: 1 bunch
Salt: 1 1/2 teaspoons
Pepper: to taste
Lemon juice: 2 tablespoons
Wine vinegar: 1 tablespoon
Olive oil: 3 tablespoons

Summer Vegetable Taboulé Recipe

1. Put the couscous, olive oil and raisins in a bowl and mix well.



Dissolve the salt in the boiling water, add it to the couscous and stir, then cover with plastic wrap and let it steam for 10 minutes.

2. While the couscous steams, finely dice the vegetables into 3 to 4 mm cubes.



3. Taste a little of the couscous. If it's evenly soft, it has rehydrated properly.


Let it cool slightly, mix in all the remaining ingredients, and season with salt and pepper. Chill well in the fridge, and your taboulé is done!

Tips for Delicious Taboulé

If you can get the couscous soft but not mushy, the rest is just adding vegetables, so it's easy.

Don't worry too much about exact amounts. Adding what you like, as much as you like, is the secret to a tasty taboulé!

• You can also rehydrate the couscous in the microwave or steam it in a pot.
• The amount of vegetables is up to you, but going light on strongly colored ones keeps things balanced. Try raisins, nuts and whatever else you like.
• Using slightly less hot water than couscous keeps the grains fluffy for longer, even after a few days.
• Seeding the cucumber or salting the vegetables and squeezing out the water also helps them stay crisp.
• Adding more parsley and herbs makes it feel more exotic.

Taboulé keeps for a few days and makes a perfect summer starter.
Why not give it a try?

See you next time. Au revoir!