Bodacious Bulgur

Happy St-Jean Baptiste, Happy Canada Day, Happy 4th of July – no matter what holiday you’re celebrating you’re probably enjoying your celebratory days off. With the summer heat FINALLY upon us, enjoying family and friends company is at the forefront which usually means that people are starting to light up there BBQ’s and grill just about anything in site.

Having recently been invited to a Non-BBQ BBQ (half way through prep my friend realized that her BBQ was still hibernating in her shed), I offered to bring a healthy and low fat side dish to accompany her culinary creations. A new bulgur salad that I recently discovered online at Fresh Direct was my choice. Midway through my recipe I threw in my apron and gave it a bit of a free styling twist – it was a dangerous attempt, but the final result was a success!


At first glance, other BBQ attendees thought this was a cous cous concoction – not so much. That’s like mistaking a piece of White Bread for a piece of whole wheat bread with multi-grains.

So, What is Bulgur? Bulgur is what's left after wheat kernels have been steamed, dried, and crushed. This cereal grain has been a food staple for years because it offers an inexpensive source of low-fat protein, making it a wonderfully nutritious addition to your low-calorie meal plan.

High in fiber and protein, and low in fat and calories, bulgur is another food that offers bulk and nutrients to fill you up without adding pounds. One thing to keep in mind, a cup of bulgur has fewer calories, less fat, and more than twice the fiber of brown rice. (quoted from http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/natural-weight-loss-food-bulgur-ga.htm)


This recipe produces an unusual but exquisite salad! Its easy to make, tastes amazing and is a great dish to introduce your friends and family to a healthier cous cous alternative.


Ingredients

3/4 cup Light Bulgur – Medium Grind #2

1 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch of Pepper
1-2 tsp of Cumin
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp of fresh chopped mint
½ cup green seedless grapes cut in half
½ cup Pistachio Nuts
½ cup Cranraisins
½ cup Golden Raisins
½ cup Chopped Dried Apricot
3 green Onions/ Shallots

Directions

1. Combine the bulgur and salt in a heatproof salad bowl and pour in the boiling water. Cover tightly and let sit for 30 minutes. The bulgur is similar to cous cous as it requires minimal cooking and it will increase in volume by two times or more. After 30 minutes, drain remaining water and fluff it with a fork.

2. Stir in the cumin and the olive oil. Stir well to make sure that cumin and oil are distributed evenly.

3.Put dried apricots, golden raisins and cranraisins in microwavable bowel and add enough water to cover the bowel. Cover the bowel with saran wrap and microwave the dried fruit for 1-2 minutes in order to soften the dried fruit with the steam. Remove from microwave and let it sit on the counter for a few minutes, drain any remaining water.

4. Add the grapes, pistachio nuts and shallots to the bulgur. Add the dried apricot, raisins and cranraisins once they are not too wert.

5. Adjust the seasoning with pepper and cumin, if necessary. This salad can be served cold, hot or at room temperature.

Yieds: 4-5 side dishes.

Enjoy,
Cara Braude

Easy Biscuits

I can't say I've ever had a real Southern meal. Despite being a city rich with world-class restaurants serving all manner of cuisines, Singapore is not well endowed with eateries serving Southern food (that is, Southern USA — biscuits, gravy, fried chicken, grits, red velvet cake). And no, Popeye's doesn't count.

But I love biscuits. The kind you mop up brown gravy with; the kind they used to serve at McDonald's for breakfast many years ago.

My many attempts at making those flaky, fluffy buttermilk biscuits have all been in vain. Our tropical weather and my non-air-conditioned kitchen make it damn near impossible — which probably says something about my talents and patience, or lack of. So C and I would settle for the Pilsbury variety. That's until they stopped stocking it at Jason's several years ago.

So the long and short of it is that we haven't had biscuits for a while. Well, we stopped at Popeye's one night but they make a poor excuse for biscuits, which don't even come with gravy!

It's a good thing then that I discovered Bon Appetit, Y'All by Virginia Willis. Its catchy title grabbed me immediately, and as it turns out, it is filled with easy-to-do home-style yet refined Southern recipes gleaned from the author's family kitchen. Within its pages are a recipe for Buttermilk Angel Biscuits, which, with its "trio of leaveners protects even the worst of bakers from abject failure", she writes. She must be speaking to me.

But before I tread once more into that familiar territory of biscuit failure, I figured I'd have a go at a decidedly easier recipe for Mayonnaise Biscuits. It is such a simple throw-everything-together recipe that the even author confesses to — in her younger, more foolish days — regarding it as one step above a baking mix. Be that as it may, it yielded such fabulous results that I am now determined to try her recipe for Buttermilk Angel Biscuits.

When I eventually find the time to, that is.

Mayonnaise Biscuits
adapted from Bon Appetit, Y'All by Virginia Willis
(Makes 9-12, depending on the size of your muffin tins)

1 tbsp canola oil, for brushing your tins
2 cups self-raising flour (I made mine by following Ms Willis' instructions to mix 1 cup cake flour with 1 cup plain flour, 3 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp fine sea salt)
1 cup milk
3 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Brush muffin tins with the oil.
3. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl.
4. Using an ice-cream scoop, drop a scoopful of batter into each muffin tin and bake for 20–30 mins, or until golden brown. Serve warm.