Pimped picnic Tabbouleh

Sometimes the best food happens, when you are preparing for a dish, and you find out you are missing some of the ingredients. This is where "pimping a dish" gets into action.

So yesterday I wanted to cook Tabbouleh for a picnic, using Nadia Sawalha’s very funny and great cookbook “Stuffed Vine leaves saved my life”.
I can recommend this book, just to read and have a laugh.

Didn’t have cracked Wheat, so I cooked some quinoa instead. My cherry tomatoes was getting a bit soft, so I oven dried them. And so on…!!

 And this pimped tabbouleh ended up being really, really nice. Almost better than the original. So here my pimped picnic Tabbouleh :

First the cherry tomatoes!  Cut the tomatoes right across the tummy (the fattest part) and leave them face up on a baking sheet. Drizzle them with olive oil and a few drops of balsamic olive oil. In the oven on 110 degrees for about 2-3 hours. Keep an eye on the little buggers! They need to shrivel up and get concentrated in their own flavour.

100gram (1/2 cup) Quinoa put it into a dry pot and toast the grains. When they start smelling slightly toasted and gives a popping sound, add water about 2-3 cm over the grains. Add 1 tsp veggie stock powder (marigold) an let in simmer under a lid for 10 – 15 min. Don’t let it stick to the bottom of the pot. When the qunioa is cooked, remove from the heat and leave to cool. Whisk in a separate bowl juice from ½ a lemon, 3o ml cold pressed olive oil, salt and pepper. And optional 1 tsp of thai fish sauce and a dash of vanilla powder, the real stuff from a vanilla stick – not the sweet baking concentrate. These two ingredients act as flavour enhancers. Trust me!

Chop up finely a huge bunch of parsley and some mint. It has to be chopped very fine, no cheating or it won’t be nice. Add a bunch of spring onions, chopped into small rings and a ½ peeled and deseeded cucumber chopped into small pieces.

Take out the cherry tomatoes of the oven! Leave to cool.

Mix it all together, taste! You might want to add more lemon juice and olive oil. Then add the oven dried tomatoes.

This is a great salad for picnic or side dish for BBQ.