Feta and Strawberry Tabouli Salad

Feta and strawberry tabouli salad is a great twist on a Middle Eastern favorite. Juicy ripe strawberries brighten the salad, adding color and a welcome sweetness. This is one salad that’s just as good as leftovers!

As much as I love a traditional tabouli salad (which is A LOT!) it’s also fun to mix things up and put a new spin on an old favorite. Adding fresh strawberries was inspired by the fancy salads we enjoy with not only greens but also fruit, nuts and cheese. In this case, the nutty-flavored bulgur wheat is standing in for actual nuts. 

On a completely different subject, let’s talk about the first ingredient, a thing I like to call purple onion. In most recipes it is referred to as red onion or Spanish onion but since my first encounter with same as a child, I’ve called it purple onion. Because it is purple! This is my tiny hill and I am prepared to defend it. 

A Google search quickly revealed that in some European countries it is indeed called purple onion and now I want to know where. Annoyingly, Wikipedia didn’t say. Even BBC Food had the nerve to describe the onion thusly, “Red onions are an attractive, milder alternative to the yellow onion with their shiny purple skin.” Purple. That’s right. 

Have I convinced anyone? Join me on the purple side. It’s more accurate over here. Plus I have tasty salad.

Feta and Strawberry Tabouli Salad

For aesthetic reasons, I chose to use yellow cherry tomatoes for this festive salad. If you only have red ones, no worries. The flavor is what really matters. 

Ingredients

For the dressing:

1/2 medium purple onion, sliced very thinly (about 2 1/2 oz or 70g)

2 tablespoons or 30ml fresh lime juice

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup or 60ml extra virgin olive oil

For the salad:

1 cup or 210g bulgur wheat (3 1/4 cups or 615g when soaked and drained)

1 bunch green onions, just the green part, chopped (about 11/4 oz or 35g)

1 very large bunch (about 5 1/3 oz or 150g) cilantro

8 oz or 227g yellow cherry tomatoes, halved

14 oz or 400g strawberries, hulled and quartered

7 oz or 200g feta, crumbled (I prefer the sheep’s milk type.)

 

Method

In metal or heatproof bowl, cover your bulgur wheat with 1 3/4 cups or 414ml of boiling water and cover the bowl with an upside down plate or some cling film. Set aside. 

Put your thinly sliced onions in a large bowl and pour the lime juice over them. Sprinkle with the salt. Add a few good grinds of fresh black pepper. 

Let the onions marinate in the lime juice for a few minutes. This helps reduced their pungency and sharpness. Now mix in the olive oil. 

Chop your green onions finely and set aside. 

Cut the hard stalks off of the cilantro and discard.  (The tender, narrow stalks near the leaves are fine to leave in.) Wash the cilantro thoroughly several times and dry in a salad spinner or a dry dishcloth.  Chop it roughly. 

Once the bulgur wheat has absorbed all of the water it can, drain it in a strainer and push down on the top to get rid of any excess water. 

Fluff it with fork and leave it to cool. 

Now we can assemble the strawberry tabouli. Add the halved tomatoes to the dressing first. 

Tip in the cooled bulgur wheat, the green onions and cilantro and mix well to coat the wheat with the dressing.

Finally, add the strawberries and feta and toss gently to combine. This tabouli gets better and better as it sits so you can make it ahead without any problems.  

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and my friends and I are sharing side dishes for your Easter table. Anything that isn’t a main course qualified so we’ve got you covered from appetizer to dessert! Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. 

• Bunny Cupcakes from Amy’s Cooking Adventures 
• Feta and Strawberry Tabouli Salad from Food Lust People Love 
• Fresh Pea Hummus from Culinary Cam
• Pineapple Bread Pudding from A Day in the Life on the Farm 
• Pork Sorpatel - East Indian from Sneha’s Recipe 
• Potato Salad with Condensed Milk from Palatable Pastime 
• Stir-Fried Balsamic and Ginger Glazed Carrots from Karen’s Kitchen Stories 
• Veggie Niçoise Salad from Mayuri’s Jikoni 
• Whole Wheat Rosemary Garlic Bread Recipe from The Mad Scientist’s Kitchen

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin this Feta and Strawberry Tabouli Salad!

 .

French Bean Watermelon Radish Salad

Beautiful to behold and tasty to eat, this French Bean Watermelon Salad would be a welcome addition to your Easter table or bridal/baby shower feast.

Most weeks I do the grocery shopping on a Friday morning, list in hand, all about moving efficiently through the store and getting home again but occasionally I take a little more time to look for new ingredients. 

A few weeks ago this paid off when I spied watermelon radishes in the produce section. They don’t look like anything much from the outside but the Google image of the inside sold me! I mean, honestly, look how pretty they are! Compared to regular radishes, their taste is mild with just a little hint of bite.

According to the The Kitchn, watermelon radishes are an heirloom variety of daikon radishes and originated in China, where they are called shinrimei. They’re a root vegetable and member of the Brassica family, which also includes arugula, broccoli, and cabbage. Watermelon radishes are larger than regular radishes and can range from the size of a golf ball to that of a softball. Mine was somewhere in between. 

Does your nearby grocery store or market sell these beauties? I hope so!

French Bean Watermelon Radish Salad

This is a fairly simple salad because I wanted to show off the watermelon radish but feel free to add other vegetables, if you’d like. Just toss them in with the green beans to dress them. One of the good things about this salad is that it is just as good the next day. Not all salads can say that!

Ingredients

1/4 small purple onion

Fine sea salt

2 tablespoons white balsamic or cider vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Freshly ground black pepper

10 oz or 285g fine French beans, topped and tailed

1 watermelon radish

2 tablespoons olive oil

Method

Finely slice the onion and add it to your salad bowl along with the vinegar, Dijon mustard, a good pinch of fine sea salt and a few generous grinds of black pepper. 

Use a sharp knife to cut the beans in half on the diagonal. Longer beans can be cut into three. 

Use a sharp knife or a mandolin to slice the watermelon radish thinly. 

Add the olive oil to the onion and vinegar in the salad bowl along. Give it all a real good mix with a fork to make a dressing. 

Put an inch or two of water on to boil in a big pot with a steamer basket for the beans. 

When the water is boiling, pop the beans onto the steamer basket and cook for 2-3 minutes, lid on, or until the beans are cooked but still a bit crunchy. I steamed mine for 3 minutes. 

Use tongs to transfer the hot beans to the salad bowl and toss well to coat them with the dressing. Set aside to cool. 

Cover your serving plate with the slices of radish, reserving a few to decorate the top.

Add the dressed beans and onion then the reserved radish slices. I folded mine in half and then half again to make that pretty shape. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are celebrating National Eat a Rainbow Day! Check out all the colorful dishes my friends are sharing below. Many thanks to our host, Wendy, from A Day in the Life on the Farm. 

• Cereal and Milk Pancakes from Palatable Pastime
• Colourful Fruit Salad Pudding  from Sneha’s Recipe
• Crispy Rainbow Egg Rolls from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• French Bean Watermelon Radish Salad from Food Lust People Love
• Moroccan Rainbow Carrot Salad from Mayuri’s Jikoni
• Naturally Dyed Rainbow Pasta  from Amy’s Cooking Adventures
• Rainbow Roasted Vegetables from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Tomato, Cucumber, and Red Onion Salad with Latholemono Dressing from Karen’s Kitchen Stories

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin this French Bean Watermelon Radish Salad!

 .

Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins #MuffinMonday

These sourdough sweet carrot mini muffins are tender and delightful with a cinnamon sugar topping. They disappear in record time. Bake some today!

If you’ve been reading along here for a number of years, you might remember that my younger daughter’s favorite birthday cake is our friend Jacky’s divine carrot cake. Unlike many carrot cake recipes, it does not start with grated carrots but cooked mashed ones. The result is a tender crumb that has won over even professed carrot haters. 

When I decided to bake sourdough carrot muffins for this month’s Muffin Monday, I knew that cooked, mashed carrots were going to be featured but if you google carrot muffins, as I did, every single one that turned up had grated carrot. 

It suddenly occurred to me that my search was faulty. What I really needed was a squash or pumpkin muffin recipe so I could replace them with cooked carrot. And so I did. 

Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins

This recipe is adapted from a pumpkin muffin recipe on Lynn’s Way of Life. You can bake these as 12 normal sized muffins but I just love the way that the mini ones disappear in my house. I mean, really, who doesn’t have room for a mini muffin? So tiny, so good. 

Ingredients for 24 mini muffins

For the muffin batter:

8 oz or 227g fresh carrots

1 cup or 125g all purpose flour

1/3 cup, firmly packed, or 66g brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for the pan, if necessary

1/4 cup or 57g sourdough discard

For the cinnamon sugar topping:

2 tablespoons, firmly packed, or 32g brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Trim the ends off of your carrots and peel them. Cut them into short lengths.

Boil the carrots in a small pot of water until tender, about 8-10 minutes. Drain the carrots and mash them with a potato masher or fork. I like to use a fork because it results in a finer mash than my potato masher. 

Put the mashed carrots in a mixing bowl to cool. 

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare your 24-cup mini muffin pan (or 12-cup regular muffin pan) by greasing it or lining it with paper liners.

Add the egg, sourdough starter, and oil to the cooled carrot bowl. Whisk to combine.

In another mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient bowl and fold until just combined. 

Divide the mixture into the cups in your prepared muffin pan.  I like to use a small cookie dough scoop. 

To make the cinnamon sugar topping, mix together brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the mixture over the muffins. 

Bake for about 14 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.

Enjoy! 

It’s Muffin Monday, the last Monday of every month where we share delicious muffin recipes! Check them out below. 

• Blueberry Granola Whole Wheat Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cashew Yogurt and Potato Muffins from Magical Ingredients
• Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pineapple Upside Down Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins!

 .

Marinated Turkey Kabobs - Shish Hindi

Flavorful and tender, these Marinated Turkey Kabobs aka Shish Hindi are a delightful main course. Stuff them in pita bread or eat them plain! So good!

For years I’ve been making shish tawook, the chicken version of this dish. It’s truly one of our favorite meals especially when served with homemade hummus and tabouli for a full-on Middle Eastern dining experience. 

While researching turkey (the fowl) for this recipe, I learned that in many languages it is called some version of “Indian bird,” for instance, in Armenian, it is called hndkahav or hntkahav, which translates to “Indian chicken.” In Hebrew, the turkey is called tarnegol hodu, literally meaning "rooster of India." In both Polish and Ukrainian, turkey is called indyk, a reference to India. Similarly it is indik in Yiddish, also referring to India. And there are more! Source: Bare Bones Translations. 

If you are saying to yourself, I had no idea that turkeys originated in India! Well, that's because they didn't. Turns out that the story is more convoluted than the name in other languages would have you believe and, frankly, the whole thing started making my head hurt. Suffice to say that the turkey is a native north American bird but it's been domesticated in many locales and one of those is India. 

At some point in my google fest, I found a site that called turkey skewers (skewers = shish) shish hindi and I can only imagine that what they were trying to indicate was Indian chicken aka turkey. I have since lost that link but it tickled me so I kept the name. 

Marinated Turkey Kabobs - Shish Hindi

I haven’t included the recipes for the garlic mayo or salad since this post is primarily about the turkey but making garlic mayo is simple. Add 1 clove of minced garlic to about 1/4 cup or 60ml of your favorite mayonnaise. For the salad, I include deseeded cucumber, finely sliced onion, sliced black olives and small tomatoes, halved. Dress the salad simply with a drizzle of olive oil, a generous squeeze of lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Ingredients

1/3 cup or 80ml plain yogurt

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 tablespoons or 45ml fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 lb or 450g turkey breast fillet 

8-10 wooden skewers, soaked in water for an hour. 

Optional to serve:

Pita bread

Garlic mayonnaise - see note above

Mixed salad- see note above

Method

Put all the ingredients except the turkey into a nonreactive bowl and mix well.  

Clean the extra fat and sinews off of the turkey breast, if any, and cut it into bite-sized pieces. 

Pop them in the bowl with the marinade and stir until the turkey is well-coated.  Let this marinate for as long as you have but at least one hour. 

When you are ready to cook the shish hindi, push the turkey pieces on to your soaked wooden skewers.

Heat a well-seasoned iron skillet till very hot.  Put the turkey on and cook for several minutes. Turn the skewers over when they are well-browned. 

Cook for a few more minutes until both sides are browned and the turkey is cooked through.   

You can eat the turkey kabobs as is with side dishes but we like to stuff them into a folded pita bread with garlic mayo and salad. A delicious, tasty meal!

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes in celebration of National Something on a Stick Day, which happens to be tomorrow, 28 March! Many thanks to our host, Mayuri of Mayuri’s Jikoni.

• Amy’s Cooking Adventures: Bacon Mini Cheese Balls on a Stick
• A Day in the Life on the Farm Homemade Corndogs
• Food Lust People Love: Marinated Turkey Kabobs - Shish Hindi
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Mini Caprese Salad Skewers
• Sneha’s Recipe: Paneer Lollipops
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Vegetable Seekh Kababs

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin these Marinated Turkey Kabobs!

 .

Crispy Oven Fried Okra

This crispy oven fried okra is crunchy, tasty and super easy! It’s also much healthier and less messy to make than deep fried versions. 

Before COVID struck and closed the hot food counter at my local Walmart, one of my favorite things to do was to buy a brown bag with 1/4 pound of fried okra and eat it as I shopped. The hot food section is open again but the okra didn’t make a comeback. I miss it. 

I hardly ever deep-fry anything because it just breaks my heart to use oil in such quantities and then throw it out. On the rare occasions that I have made southern fried chicken or some other fried treat like my jalapeño corn puffs, I usually strain the oil and save it in the refrigerator (so it doesn’t turn rancid) for at least one more use. Which makes me feel a little bit better. 

I was delighted when our host for this week’s Sunday FunDay event chose okra as our theme because I’ve been wanting to try to make oven fried okra for quite a while. I was pretty pleased by how this turned out. Some of the coating did fall off of the okra but most of it stayed on so I’m calling this one a win. 

Crispy Oven Fried Okra

This recipe is adapted from one on Sing for Your Supper with a few extra ingredients added to the egg for more flavor. 

Ingredients  

14 oz or 400g fresh okra

6 tablespoons cornmeal

6 tablespoons panko breadcrumbs

1 egg

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon flour

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

Olive oil spray

Method 

Preheat your oven to 425°F or 218°C and line a large baking pan with foil or a silicone liner.

Combine the cornmeal and panko, in a gallon-size Ziploc bag.

Trim the ends off of the okra and cut it into short pieces about 1/2 in or 1cm wide.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the egg, mayonnaise, flour, mustard and cayenne.

Add the cut okra and stir well until all the pieces are well coated. 

Add the okra a little at a time to the bag and shake until coated. 

Tip the okra out on to the lined baking sheet and then separate the pieces. 

Spray them lightly with the olive oil spray. 

Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until crispy, turning the okra halfway through baking and giving them another spray of the olive oil. 

For the last few minutes, turn the oven to broil and watch the okra closely so it browns but doesn’t burn. 

This crispy oven fried okra would make a lovely side dish but I like to eat it by hand straight out of the bowl as a snack! 

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and we are all sharing okra recipes! Many thanks to our host Sneha of Sneha’s Recipe. 

• Baked Okra Fries from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Begova Corba from Bosnian Chicken Okra Soup from Pandemonium Noshery 
• Bhendi (Okra) Sabzi With Pickle Masala from Sneha’s Recipe 
• Crispy Oven Fried Okra from Food Lust People Love  
• Okra Mexicana from A Day in the Life on the Farm

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin this Crispy Oven Fried Okra!

 .