Purely Random

Over the weekend, I went to my home town in Ohio for my mom’s Birthday. As a gift, I put together an exciting vegetarian barbecue and brought home all the fixin’s from the Whole Foods in Pittsburgh (my mom is a vegetarian—that’s why I sometimes lean that way). As always, the barbecue was tasty and exciting. But that’s not what this post is about. This post, is about the leftovers. My mom almost always sends all her leftovers home with me because I have housemates that might potentially eat it, and it would just sit in the fridge at her place. The result: I have a lot of leftovers in my fridge. It also seems as if it’s up to me to eat it; my housemates all seem to ask, “isn’t there any meat in it?” and go on to heat up a frozen dinner.

Which brings me to the following: the “Freakin’ Delectable Tabbouleh Salad Wrap.” Tabbouleh is a Mediterranean salad with bulgur wheat and chopped vegetables: namely parsley, tomato, cucumber, and green onion. Add a few extra flavors, and you have a tasty side to go with your falafel. Tyler Florence has a good recipe on the Food Network site for anyone that wants to give it a try.

Now, what does one do with all the leftovers? I had more tabbouleh than anything else from the barbecue. Tabbouleh doesn’t exactly make a great main course, so I followed through on a hunch and created a wrap. When I took a bite, all I could think was, “This is really good—it’s “f***ing delectable.” Hence this post.

I know, everyone reading this is thinking that I’ve built up a freakin’ wrap just a little bit much. Anybody can just throw leftover anything in any variety of wrap-able bread product, and the result isn’t all that exciting. I think the key here was to heat the tabbouleh ever so slightly in my microwave and spread a dab of cream cheese on the wrap to add just a little bit of tang.

I made one last night when I needed a quick snack to take with me on some errands I needed to run before stores started closing, and it was delicious. At first a thought maybe I was just really hungry, but then I made another one for lunch today: still amazing. The basic recipe is described below.

• 1 cup leftover tabbouleh salad
• 2 T garden veggie cream cheese
• 1 8- or 10-inch tortilla (I used whole wheat)

First, pop a tortilla in the toaster to heat it up just a bit and give it some color. Be careful, you don’t want it to get crispy and rigid. Then rejuvenate the tabbouleh with a little extra salt and pepper and warm it in your microwave for about a minute. I thought this really forced the flavors to mix a little bit more, and the warmth was very refreshing when I went to eat it. While the tabbouleh heats up, you can spread the cream cheese down the center of your tortilla. Assembly is identical to any other wrap.

For being such a simple concoction (given that the tabbouleh is already prepared), this was an amazingly tasty wrap. I think it really came out to be better than the sum of its parts. Enjoy! I would love to hear from anyone who makes it (just post a comment). If you live in Pittsburgh, I’d be happy to dish out some tabbouleh as a starter. Actually, I’d probably even assemble the wrap if you asked nicely.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 8:17 am and is filed under Cuisine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.