Tabbouleh
From: musters
Sent: 09 August 2009 15:29:52
To: ledbury@ottolenghi.co.uk
Dear Yotam,
Today I tried your tabbouleh recipe as featured in last weekend's Guardian magazine.
Your point about there being a right way (and by extension a wrong one) was well made. You talk about a "million bastardised versions of this simple salad". That, under no circumstances, must couscous be used. No, it must be bulgar wheat but, in fact, parsley is the star of the show and that it must be chopped very fine and not bruised. Top-quality olive oil must also be used no matter how expensive top-quality olive oil is. Several hundred pounds a bottle you'll find.
Yotam Ottolenghi, you are clearly a tabbouleh purist and I'm aware that you chefs are well trained in offering verbal abuse the better to improve your employees. It is with that in mind that I must inform you that in your pedantic and pompous description of the "perfect" recipe you have forgotten one tiny detail, numbnuts.
It is this. Bulgar wheat must be cooked. Not merely sieved under cold water to remove starch. Otherwise it's hard and utterly inedible.
You towering idiot!
Best Regards,
Musters
5 comments:
Young Yotam did specify the use of fine bulgar. You didn't by any chance use a regular sized variant, did you?
If so that does indeed need to be re-hydrated. Not cooked mind - it's already been cooked you see, and then dried off again.
Yea it recently dawned on me that I may have made an arse of myself here. He did specify fine. But even couscous needs to be immersed in boiling water (cooked!) for a few minutes, like.
Nah. You can pour hot water on and leave it for 5 or 10 mins, or you can pour cold water on and leave it for 20 to 30 mins.
But what you're doing is putting water into it - not cooking it.
But that arshole Yotam only said rinse it. I'm almost certainly wrong but I think he fucked up.
Could you simply soak your prepared salad in water for 20 mins, then strain, re-season and serve?
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