Have you ever headed to the kitchen to start making dinner, only to find out you should have read the recipe beforehand? Either it cooks longer than expected, or something has to rest for an hour, or the meat was supposed to marinate overnight. The latter happened to me the other night. It turns out the chicken I was making needed to marinate 2 – 24 hours, but I would have been lucky to get a half hour in. Sometimes I say, “whatever” and forge ahead anyway, but this time I had to admit that the long marination would enhance the dish. Hence the late Cook the Book Fridays post.
The recipe we cooked last week from My Paris Kitchen was Tabbouleh, a Lebanese parsley salad. This one is apparently more traditional than the bulgur-filled salads we are used to; rather it only had 2 tablespoons of bulgur to 10 cups of parsley. Mint, olive oil, green onions, lemon, and a few spices round out the ingredients. David suggests leaves of romaine lettuce to scoop up the salad, but I had to settle for butter lettuce since we are in the midst of a romaine lettuce crisis.
In deciding what to serve as a main dish to the tabbouleh, I looked to Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s book Jerusalem. I’ve had this book for a couple of years but have not spent enough time exploring it yet. I chose Roasted Chicken with Jerusalem Artichoke & Lemon. While looking through the book I found many more I want to try; I can’t forget to get back to them!
So, it turns out we are not big fans of Tabbouleh. I tasted too much parsley and not enough of the other flavors. It was fine, but nothing I will make again.
The chicken, on the other hand, was wonderful! I must remember to use that book more often.
From Scratch 