Tabbouleh With Grilled Vegetables

Back in graduate school, I was a tabbouleh-phobe. OK, maybe I'd been to one too many parties where earnest medieval scholars and post-modern poets in ill-fitting shoes shoved bowls of it under my nose. All I could smell was parsley and onion. Well, that and the patchouli. Blech. The whole thing added up to dirty socks to me. (I'm even more phobic about dirty socks. But that's a whole different story--and way too much information.)

I got over it. Not the sock phobia. Rather, the tabbouleh one. Because Bruce has taught me that it has nothing to do with parsley and raw onion. Rather, it's simply a whole grain salad with veggies, pitched together as you will. Sign me up.

So we've been having a summer of tabbouleh because 1) we're both under book deadlines (me with the step-by-step plan to get off processed food and Bruce with his knitting book) and 2) it's just so darn easy, a vegetarian meal for several days in a row, even better when combined with a couple other easy salads for a lunch spread.

So here goes.

Put 1 1/2 cups bulgur wheat in a large bowl and cover it with 1 1/2 cups boiling water. Set aside for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, cut a couple zucchini or yellow squash into long strips about 1/2 inch thick. Grill them over high heat. (We actually do this at night when we're making dinner, saving them back for salads the next day.) Chop them up and put them in a large serving bowl.

Then peel a large cucumber and cut in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds with a small spoon, then chop the cucumber and put it in the serving bowl. Also mince a medium shallot, minced a couple garlic cloves, and chop up a cup of packed basil leaves. Add those to the serving bowl as well, along with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

Once the bulgur has absorbed the water, dig into it with a fork and break it all up into individual grains. Add all the softened bulgur to the veggies.

Finally, pour in 1/4 cup olive oil (the better the olive oil, the better the final dish) and 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar. Toss it all up and you're good to go. As I said, you can also seal it under plastic wrap and store it in the fridge for several days. I like mine with a little smoky eggplant dip and some guacamole on the side. And a whole wheat pita, of course. No patchouli in sight.