Our garden is quite unpredictable.
Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that we haven’t had quite enough experience to completely understand what’s going on. Last year we had an amazing crop of peas, but very little parsley. This year the pea plants are short and stumpy, but the parsley is self-sown and growing in huge clumps…
In our first couple of years of gardening, we tried to figure it out, but it nearly drove us bonkers. So instead we’ve given up and simply adapt our eating to whatever we can grow in any given season. This winter, it’s lots of Chinese leafy greens, the ever reliable chard and leeks, and mountains of continental parsley.
My favourite lunch at the moment is a vegetarian wrap, spread with tahini and stuffed with a simple tabbouleh. I’ll occasionally add meat or fish, but it really is just as good without it.
Inspired by a recipe from Abla’s Lebanese Kitchen, our salad is very rough and basic. I make up a batch every few days and stash it in the fridge.
- very large bunch of continental parsley
- tomatoes
- half a Spanish onion
- ½ cup fine bulgur
- salt to taste (I use about ¾ teaspoon, but I’m making quite a lot)
- freshly ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon (or less) of ground pimento (allspice)
- lemon juice
- extra virgin olive oil
1. Place the bulgur in a heatproof bowl, and cover with ½ to ¾ cup boiling water (how much you need will vary depending on the bulgur you buy). Cover with cling film and allow to absorb while you prep the other ingredients.
2. Chop up the continental parsley as finely as you can without risking damage to your fingers (this warning is issued from experience!). I use all of the leaf and a bit of finely chopped stalk. Chop up the tomatoes (I only ever have a few from the garden), and dice the Spanish onion. Combine them all together in a large mixing bowl. The original recipe also includes mint, but it’s not doing so well in our garden at the moment.
3. Stir in the bulgur grains with the salt, pepper and pimento. Stir in the lemon juice and olive oil to taste (Abla’s recipe specifies 150ml of each to 5 cups of chopped parsley, but I just slurp it in).
4. Split a pita bread in half, and spread one side generously with tahini. Add a generous scoop of tabbouleh, roll up and enjoy!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Self-sown parsley?! Wow. And your wrap looks splendidly delish. I sure wish my parsley self-sowed. :)
Misky, some years we can’t give it away! And in those years it grows like crazy all over the neighbourhood, so we have a stream of friends trying to feed it to the chooks, who won’t eat it! :)
Oh i know just what you mean, some years i cannot get one bean, the next year i have piles of them.. some years i cannot grow a cucumber to save myself and this year I have grown three (so far!!) laugh.. no rhyme nor reason. I always say right i am off to pick dinner and who knows what i will bring in! But we eat it alll. I had forgotton about taboulleh, I used to eat this all the time.. Maybe I will make one for my lunch, minus the wrap though, i am too lazy to make those today!c
Celi, I know there is a great science to it, but I have still got no idea how it all works. One bed was great for a couple of years, but is now rubbish – I think it needs more food!
Buy a cow! the manure is magic!! you can tell the council it is just a big dog! c
There’s a guy in the neighbouring suburb who keeps a shetland pony in his backyard!
That is fantastic, run down and nick the manure in the night! .. c
To keep things in perspective, we’re less than 10k from the middle of Sydney, on medium sized blocks! He’s a bit of a legend in these parts – he only walks his horse at night, I think that’s so the council doesn’t cotton on! :)
Looks delicious!! If my parsley regrows (I just froze it all!) I will try this. Probably tastes good on a hot day like we’re having, too.
Manuela, I’m a bit hooked on tahini, and I sometimes wonder if my tabbouleh is just an excuse to eat more of it.. ;-)
That’s a tasty looking wrap. I’m one of those gardeners who can’t figure it out either but I’ve learned to just pick whatever happens to grow. I guess I missed out on my mother’s gardening gene because that woman could make rocks grow. We always had a huge garden when I was growing up & it seems like everything just produced. I was just thinking too of how hard she worked at the end of each summer sweating in the kitchen canning all those vegetables.
Oh, how I wish I could make rocks grow! But I’m incredibly grateful that some things DO grow. We’ve always had enough for dinner – we don’t buy too many veg these days – but I’d love to experience the occasional glut (in something other than tromboncinos!) :)
It looks like your parsley is growing a lettuce too! What a fabulously healthy lunch.
Also self-sown! Thanks Jo, it was delicious too!
Love those ‘rough’ and ‘basic’ salads Celia… my parsley seems content in the kitchen garden too.
Lizzy, that’s good to know, because it’s cold where you are! x
Dear Celia,
I never used to like tabbouleh when I was younger and I figured it could be the taste of continental parsley although I love it now. Your wrap looks so healthy, it is enticing me even though there is no meat in there.
Chopinand, I don’t miss the meat, and like you, I’m a bit of a carnivore! :)
Yay Celia you make me feel better about my trial-and-error gardening. Your way sounds much more exciting and you get to have such wonderful lunches!
Claire, it’s just not worth the stress and disappointment! When we’re really flat chat, we just grow easy stuff – lots of Chinese greens, perennial leeks and so forth.. :)
Celia, for the last 3 years my parsley (which is grown only and foremostly for my Tabouleh!!! plus the Kofta mix) has not been successful.something keeps eating the seeds & no growth at all. You’ve inspired me to keep going now cause looking at your delicious pics, I’m drooling!!!!
Lina, I’m sorry to hear that! I hope it grows for you this year!
Your tabbouleh looks fabulous! Very authentic :)
I hope next year you get a bumper peas AND parsley crop and not either/or
Oooh, thank you Lisa, I’m a bit relieved to hear that. I didn’t add the spring onions or mint, but I did think the pimento/allspice added a really nice flavour. It would be lovely to get peas AND parsley together in the one year! :)
That does look very nice indeed Celia! I make tabbouleh using quinoa instead of the wheat and it tastes great too. I love your parsely, mine is actually surviving the sleet and freeze really well :) xox
Becca, it sounds like the parsley is doing ok in Canberra, at least in yours and Lizzy’s gardens! I can’t get the boys to come within a bull’s roar of quinoa!
Your parsley is really going to town! I add mint to my tabbouleh and love it.
My mint is really healthy- the parsley is still not up to much cutting yet. But the cucumbers seem to be doing pretty well and I have two tomatoes ripening on the vines.
Happy gardening- happy eating!
Heidi, sounds like you’ve got a lot of edibles growing this year! Hooray! :)
Gorgeously appetizing!! Make something like it myself for ‘High Tea’ [ :) !] as my main meal is lunch. Still use a lot of pita, but with our choice of soft tortillas, mountain breads and other wraps there is no lack of choice: feel for Celi bang in the middle of Illinois – hmm, would not always have time to make my own either!! Don’t talk of gardening vagaries: remember a tiny pot of flat parsley I stuck into a small pocket of ground on a windy and dry hillside in the N Rivers, which just happened to grow a metre high and a metre tall – did not dare use it till I had it checked!!! It sure was a long tabbouli time!!!
Hmm: not being very careful, am I? Methinks you know I meant a metre high and that again wide!! Slapped myself on the wrist :) ! But almost frighteningly that ‘thing’ really did take off!!!
Hahaha…I knew what you meant, love! When parsley finds a spot it likes, it can really go nuts! :)
At least this way you eat a variety of new and different vegetables each season :)
Tandy, that’s true! This season we’re eating a whole stack of Chinese greens I’ve never cooked with before!
The photo of your wrap looks so good. I’m always shocked at what’s growing in my garden too – too little of everything. I think I’ll just let it be until Spring, then I’ll get going with it xx
Charlie, it’s been such a mild winter that the leafy greens are all doing quite well. Nothing too ambitious out there at the moment though.. :)
Snap! We had our house version, no onion but cucumber, last night, but using curly parsley and we cheat and chop in the gadget :) Sat out eating with warm broad beans in a little dressing and very holey sourdough – bread rising a bit fast in the heat – and then huge drops of rain fell in my tabbouleh !
Our parsley flowers second year, like you still trying to understand growing cycles, biannuals still confuse me !
Jo, when we were at the Prahran Markets, the folks who made the dips there said they always used curly parsley in their tabbouleh, as it bruised much less and transported better than the flat leaf variety! I don’t understand the garden at all sometimes! :)
Very nice. I have such trouble with parsley and basil in my garden. They just bolt to seed, but never reseed themselves. Disappointing.
Amanda, we have the same problem with coriander some years, although lately it’s been doing a bit better…
Your wrap looks so good Celia, I could eat them for dinner right now! x
Jane, I’ve been known to occasionally have it for breakfast! :)
We’ve been eating a similar dish as my parsley has gone mad this year – added some coriander before it all goes to seed and using the final spring onions from last year. I love the inventiveness that goes with gardening and cooking – so different from cooking from the supermarket trolley.
Anne, we really do go outside and ask ourselves, “what do we have to eat today?”.. :)
That looks lovely. Although I only grow herbs now, I used to have a large garden and an allotment. Sometimes I felt like a hunter gatherer, just looking for what had volunteered this week! I swear some things I had never sown.
Pat, that’s too funny – recently I said to Pete, “where did that bok choy come from?” And he said, “Oh, I think we threw some seed in a few years ago..” :)
Noms! The hub loves tabouli. Now to find some bulgar… hugs, Maz
Couscous will work as well, Maz! :)
Thanks!
I love Abla :) Great tabbouleh. It’s a lunch staple for me to, the G.O. is meh about it, I add tuna and hommous, and sometimes brown rice. I’m not sure how people who have gardens that seem to produce on demand do it, I truly think they pretend. Gardens are like cats, they do what they do ;)
ED, you could be right. I know when we started the garden, I had these grand plans about what we were going to do “with all our produce”. Ha! We grow just enough to keep us going, which I guess is serendipitous and how it should be. Well, except for tromboncinos.. ;-)
Celia I wanted to add also, that I usually add pomegranate to my Tabouleh & it gives it that zesty limey taste with a bit of added sweetness. Just a thought…..
Lina, thank you, I have some pom molasses and I’ll add a slurp in next time! :)
What an awesome lunch! I love tabbouleh, but never thought of stuffing it in a wrap. how yummy! Great idea Celia :)
Em, it’s a byproduct of eating whatever I can find in the garden! :D
We go through a truckload of tabbouleh every week. John adds it to every snack he makes. This looks good! I like Lina’s suggestion of pomegranate. I’ll give that a go.
I think the pomegranate sounds fabulous too! I’ve got pom molasses in the pantry which I’ll add to my next batch!
MMMMMM,!!!Your simple tabbouleh wraps look so tasty, Celia!!! Yum!
Perfect for this weather we are having…looks wonderful…
Welcome to growing your own :) I love it that we all have this in common, the weather, the soil, the seeds all vary from year to year, and you know what I don’t really think I would change it – the unpredictability of it all is captivating to me. My peas were pretty pants too this year, I put it down to a late and cold spring, the other thing I realised was that my seeds were pretty old so maybe check that out – or try another variety….
And as to your wrap – I’d say it’s a wrap darling! A delicious, fresh, zingy wrap, which makes it perfect. C x