Monthly Archives: April 2013

If you said “let’s go out for a Turkish tonight” I would previously have had to weigh up the time span between now and my last kebab and consider if my body was ready for the next undertaking. But now I know better than to conjure up such a swift image of mayo and chilli slathered wraps. The cuisine of almost the entire Middle East take their traditional dishes from Turkey, thanks to the Ottoman Empire rule, and they don’t all eat kebabs every day in Jordan. No, sir. Mezze is king. And besides those gloriously charcoal charred lamb chunks with natural yoghurt you will find a beautiful array of light, vegetarian low-carb accompaniments.  Tabbouleh is the staple of these.

This dish will stand proudly by itself as a healthy lunch box salad, but does just as well siting alongside many main dishes. Its quick to make too.

To serve 4 as a main

2 cups of bulgar wheat
4 tomatoes chopped into small chunks
1 cucumber seeded and chopped into small chunks
4 spring onions finely chipped
Bunch of parsley, stalks removed
Bunch of mint, stalks removed
Juice of 1 lemon
Olive oil

Firstly soak the bulgar wheat in boiling water and set aside for 10 minutes until it is soft to bite. Next loosely chop the parsley and mint, along with your tomatoes, cucumber and spring onion. Add the vegetables, herbs together in a bowl. Drain the bulgar wheat and refresh under cold water, before adding to the mix. Toss the mixture together with the lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. Serve.

For the last 11 years I have been making this very same hummus. It was a recipe handed to me by a dear old indian friend in West London and it has been stuck to the side of my mum’s fridge in Wiltshire ever since. I get the call up almost every time I am back with the family to get a vat-load made, which never lasts more than a few hours despite the vast quantities produced.

Ingredients

2 tins chickpeas (or 800g soaked chickpeas)
1 onion finely chopped
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
2 teaspoons tahini
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon paprika
Good glug of olive oil

Add all the ingredients into a blender and give it a good whizz. If you like your hummus runny add some more olive oil a bit at a time until you reach your desired consistency. It will store in the fridge for around 3 days.

There are all sorts of ways to give this some variety and depending on what I have in the cupboard determines what goes in. But given my recent excursion to the Middle East for a few months I saw a completely different aspect to hummus, in its original environment. Ingredients that have been put together for centuries, since the age of Saladin fighting the crusaders, have kept generations of people fit and healthy across the furthest western tip of the asian continent. To me, olives and harissa always give that something extra, but the show stoppers that take bronze, silver and gold, in that order are sesame seeds, pine nuts and olympic champion za’atar.

If you don’t have za’atar in your cupboard already, or you haven’t even heard of it, please take my word for it and buy some as soon as you can. My Jordanian friends eat a teaspoon of this for breakfast every day, which is a far cry from the porridge I have most mornings, but they swear by its health benefits. Made from predominantly oregano and thyme, it has a beautiful citrusy tang that will liven any dish into middle eastern paradise.