I wanted to make a vegetarian dish for my son.
INGREDIENTS: Quantity will feed up to 6 people
1 cup of coarse burghul #4
4 cups of broth (can be meat, vegetable or chicken), divided in half
1 medium onion (5 oz), chopped
3 Tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic or more, mashed
1 Tablespoon of alyyieh al-kozbara (cilantro pesto-see my post)
1/2 bag of frozen beans ( about 2 cups)
Spices consisting of salt, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, coriander, paprika or smoked paprika if you like a bit of heat (1/2 teaspoon each, or to your liking)
6 tomatoes, preferably vine tomatoes
1 cup of yoghurt, thinned out a bit with 2 tablespoons of water if it is too thick
METHOD:
- Simmer the broth gently in a small saucepan.
- Heat the oil in a pot, then add the onion and fry for a few minutes until golden. Add the burghul and stir it in the pot until all the grains are coated with oil and it gets a bit toasted. Add the spices and stir. Add the beans and stir one minute.
- Add all at once half the hot broth and stir the pot once, then cover it and let the grains swell up and absorb the broth around 20 minutes. At this point, add the garlic and cilantro and stir a bit.
- Cut the top of the tomatoes off and core them with a sharp paring knife. Stuff them with the burghul mixture and cover them with their tops. Place them in a pot and add the rest of the broth. Cover and bake in a moderate oven about 45 minutes.
- Serve warm with some cold yoghurt to spoon over. Sahteyn!
NOTE:
If you don’t have cilantro pesto in your freezer then it is fine to use some fresh chopped cilantro with garlic, sauteed a couple of minutes in a small skillet with some extra-virgin olive oil.
8 Comments
I followed your recipe to the letter and it tasted fantastic.
Thank you!
Hello Joummana,
Do you know the dish riz belfoul?
Leyla,
Yes and I love it! I should make it now because I have seen fresh fool at the middle-eastern grocery.
Hi Joumana,
This is a very nice presentation. I prepared the bulgur with the fool only for a quick lunch. Per my mother-in-law such a combination is called “ba’let fool”.
To me, the first crop of tender green fava pods signaled the beginning of spring. I used to love eating straight out of the pod
My mom had myriad ways of preparing it: in a stew, with rice pilaf, with olive oil and lemon (fool mzayat0 and with yoghurt (fool b’laban), but my favorite way is when it is served with cocktails and mezze:
Drop shelled fava beans in a pot of salted boiling water and cook till tender. The frozen variety often takes about 10 minutes.
Drain into a serving bowl, reserving some of cooking liquid. Add the reserved cooking liquid and enough cold water to submerge the beans,
Add the juice of one lemon (or more to taste), a dash of salt, 1/2 tsp of cumin and 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper.
Mix all and server.
Yummy
Dana
I have never had it like this and it sounds so good and easy! My mom loves fool too especially with laban. I just saw a recipe for it with similar spices but crushed in oum mouncifrayan’s surmatable.blospot.
I love the fool b laban recipe. I just asked my Mom about it today. She told me to get the most tender pods, remove the side strings and then cook in boiling water until tender and well done.
Drain in a colander then squeeze all moisture out of the pods and the beans by hand. She said to keep on squeezing and mashing the pods and beans till a smooth mixture results (sounds like a labor intensive step).
She them mixes them with garlicky yoghurt and garnishes the surface with lots of scallions and fresh mint.
I’ve never seen young pods of fava beans here before. Have you had better luck?
No! But I will keep my eyes open! I like your mom’s recipe a lot and I’m not familiar with it, it sounds perfect for spring season. My mom’s was the one with cooked laban mixed with coriander and garlic. I just saw some fool at the palestinian grocer but they looked old and tired!
I have never had it that way with cooked laban. I hope you’ll get to post the recipe sometime