Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh is the most misunderstood dish in Lebanese cooking. Outside the country it is often served as a bulgur salad flecked with parsley; inside Lebanon it is a parsley salad flecked with bulgur — and the Lebanese Heritage Kitchen is uncompromising on the distinction. The proper ratio is roughly ten parts finely chopped flat-leaf parsley to one part fine bulgur, and the parsley must be chopped by hand with a very sharp knife, never in a food processor, which bruises the leaves and turns the salad wet and olive-drab. Tabbouleh is a coastal Lebanese dish that traveled inland: it was perfected in the restaurants of Beirut and the family kitchens of the Chouf mountains, where wild parsley grew along every terrace wall. On the mezze table it sits beside hummus, baba ghanouj, and fattoush, and it is never eaten with a fork — Lebanese families scoop it up with crisp romaine lettuce hearts or tear pieces of fresh khubz to use as edible spoons. In 2009 the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism organized the largest tabbouleh in the world — over 3,500 kilograms, prepared in Beirut on Achrafieh's Sassine Square — to reclaim the dish from the international confusion. A good tabbouleh tastes bright, lemony, almost aggressive; the salt must be assertive; and the olive oil must be the best the kitchen owns.