I had a lovely day today. Apart from the usual shopping, dog walking and talking to mum and dad, I had lunch with Dawn.
Normally we go to a pub for a meal, either over here at The Albion or over in Haslemere at The Mill. I thought this was silly when I could easily whip up something similar so I suggested we have lunch in the garden. This was especially tempting given the lovely weather we’re having at the moment.
I decided to make tabbouleh with a crisp leaf salad and oak smoked salmon. Actually, I only decided on oak smoked when I saw the packet in Waitrose.
I remember a long time ago, going to a family party, celebrating the successful escape by some Armenian political refugees, given by James Balian who I met…to be honest I can’t remember how I met James but he was a film student and I was in a few of his class projects.
One of the things about Armenian family parties is that everyone mucks in with the food preparation. I was given a big bowl of minced up meat and, what I can only describe as ‘stuff’, and told I was making the kofta. It was very squishy and quite difficult to make stick on the skewers. Everyone thought it was very funny and a few helpful ladies gave me pointers. Now I make my own koftas and I thank them for showing me how to do it properly!
Anyway, while I was squishing around in my bowl, one lady was busy chopping up bits of tomato, cucumber and mint very, very finely. She had a nice pile in front of her. When I asked what she was making, she said tabbouleh. She then let me know how difficult it was and how it was very important to get everything cut up nice and finely. I fell in love with tabbouleh that day.
In saying that, I’ve not had any for many years so decided, a lovely summery day was just the time to re-acquaint myself with it. I found a rough sort of recipe and adapted it to what I had then spent the morning preparing it.
I feel obliged to say it was pretty good! Dawn was so impressed she asked me for the recipe and insisted she was going to force feed it to Nicktor, who, as we all know, doesn’t do salad. It made a lovely accompaniment to a gloriously (not too hot) sunny day, on our patio, under the big umbrella.
