For silent vegetarians

The vegetarian dish was an old standby of mine from years ago when I was less ambitious in the kitchen and had more vegetarian friends. It is from a Madhur Jaffreyy cookbook originally, but I was introduced to it by a very silent tutorial partner at university, who had devised several shortcuts. Years of experiment led me to the realisation that the times given were based on rather tougher versions of chickpeas and bulghur wheat than I usually use, so I have further tweaked the timings and added a couple of extra twiddles of my own.

Charlotte Smith’s bulghur wheat with chickpeas and tomatoes:

4 tbsp oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tin tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1/2 tsp + 3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp minced fresh parsley
1 cup bulghur wheat
lemon slices
more parsley to garnish

Heat the oil in a large pan with a tight-fitting lid. Fry the onions until soft, then add tomatoes and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add chickpeas, 1/2tsp salt and minced parsley, and cook for ten minutes on a low heat, stirring gently. Add bulghur wheat, 1 cup of water and 3/4 tsp salt. Stir and bring to a simmer. Cover, turn heat down very low and cook for 20 minutes. Turn off the flame, remove lid and cover pan wth a clean tea-towel. Replace lid and let sit for ten minutes. Stir in generous amounts of freshly ground black pepper and serve garnished with parsley and slices of lemon to squeeze over it.