Not all of the master cooks in Pittsburgh work in fancy restaurants.

Some of them are just home cooks, like Marion Albert.

I'm sure you know people like her.

Whenever there's an occasion in your church or family where lots of good, authentic food is needed.

People always know who to call and Marion is one of those people.

She bakes her own bread.

She cooks mountains of food for her family and friends and never seems to raise a sweat.

She's been on our show several times to share her passion and her expertise, and this time she showed us how to make a healthy and tasty sala that combines wheat and parsley.

She calls it tabbouleh.

Tell me how to make tabbouleh.

Okay, fine.

I have some of the ingredients ready for you.

Okay.

The first is a half cup of the bulgur.

Oh, yeah.

Now this is.

This is bulgur wheat.

Which I've seen down at the strip.

It's Stamoolis.

And I guess other places like that.

And what what number is this?

Because they all have numbers.

This is number one.

And they go up to number four.

Okay.

The larger the number, the larger the size of the wheat.

The wheat.

So this is real small.

This is the finest, That's the smallest as it gets.

And now we've prepared it by soaking in the water.

And then we'll drain it late when we add it to the tabbouleh.

Okay.

We drain it and squeeze the water out of it and pour it on top of it.

So we'll leave that over there.

That's soaking.

So that's the first thing you have to do is put your bulgur into water to just let it, puff up.

Right.

Okay.

Next ingredient is two bunches of parsley.

Okay.

I've taken the stems from the parsley.

So this is what it looks like.

Well, you know, a parsley looks like crisp.

Yeah.

But you've taken all the stems off of it and now its washed and ready to go into the processor.

Okay.

Processors save us a lot of work in making tabbouleh.

Okay, so I'm going to put it in.

Right.

Okay.

And this is boy about one great big handful.

It's a good sized bunch a good bunch.

All right.

And then we have fresh mint.

If you can't find fresh mint, you can always use dried mint.

Usually they use about two tablespoons of dried mint to maybe a half a cup or a cup of fresh mint.

Now again, you've taken the, all the stems from off of this.

Okay.

And this is how much did you say this is?

That's about three fourths of a cup.

Three fourths of a cup.

Ooh, that smells wonderful.

We started to grow this in our garden this year.

So we have it for, decoration.

But, Oh.

Oh.

The smell.

Yes.

This is a good time to plan parsley at home or mint at home.

And if you don't have a garden, you can mix it in with your flowers.

Parsley is a beautiful additive to your annual flowers in your front yard.

Great.

So if you ever want to plant it, it's very easy.

And this is the time of the year to do it.

And while you're at it, you plant your couple tomato plants and you have most of your, ingredients.

Okay.

Now, what do we do?

Do we, process this?

Process that.

Okay.

I think we're missing a little part of this, but we'll see if it works without it.

All right.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm just not too much, right?

Well, enough so that it's not too, too fine and yet not too course.

That looks good.

Oh.

That's nice.

Oh, I can see that.

Oh, what a smell from fresh parsley and fresh mint.

Oh, as Nancy always says, I wish we had television.

That you could smell when we're doing these cooking shows.

All right, so now I kind of put this in this bowl, right?

All right.

I'm going to put this on the side.

Pack this in.

Get my little spatula.

Next comes the green onions.

We take a bunch of green onions.

And we use the tops and the bottoms.

And we usually chop those by hand because the processor wouldn't do a very good job on it.

Isn't that funny?

That it doesn't really do a good job on green onions?

But it's not hard to chop green onions.

And there are some that are already chopped there.

Okay.

So just in case these are what we're talking about.

Green onions, what we call scallions when I was growing up.

Right.

And you're chopping up about how much?

Is this about a half a cup.

Half a cup.

Okay.

And just put them right in.

Right.

All right.

Then there are chopped tomatoes to go in there.

These are already chopped.

And if you'd like to do more, you can, You don't need to, though.

See, I love tomato in tabbouleh.

Good.

The first time I had tabbouleh, it must have been like depression era tabbouleh.

It was nothing but parsley.

Okay.

I mean, there were just little flecks of the, the bulgur and.

No, no other ingredients.

Okay.

That's okay.

So do you think that's enough or or, you can chop.

Should I chop one more?

I chop one because you you actually put.

You put a lot.

Yes.

It gives it color too.

Otherwise you have all green and no red.

Another thing you can do with tabbouleh, and I've seen it done is when cherry tomatoes are plentiful, if you feel like scooping them ou and filling them with tabbouleh, it's a beautiful garnish at a special party you have.

Oh, and you use the filling right in your tabbouleh.

That's a nice idea, isn't it?

Stuffed cherry tomatoes stuffed with with tabbouleh.

Okay, but you wouldn't put tomatoes in the tabbouleh that you were stuffing into that, right?

Yes you would.

Oh little tomatoes.

Tomatoes.

Now that you chop them a little bit finer when you're going to be, doing that, I want to make sure we got enough room here to see what we're doing.

Okay.

Now we can.

Good enough.

I think that's enough.

That's plenty.

But when we add this.

Goes with chop.

Much nicer than mine.

That's all right.

Next comes the wheat.

We need the strainer.

Okay.

I have it, and we.

We drain the wheat and squeeze the water out of it and add it to the tabbouleh ingredients that you already have here.

There you go.

Now, you really want to drain this well, right?

You can squeeze it.

Squeeze it?

Sure.

Get all that water out.

Good enough.

That won't hurt.

Okay.

And it.

But it separates again.

Okay.

Just want to make sure I got it all nice here.

I don't want to add water to this thing.

Okay.

Well, that's good.

Next comes your lemon juice.

Two thirds cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice.

If you have it, you can use the bottled.

But we prefer the fresh.

You've already squeezed your lemon.

Yes.

Okay.

It's really.

It's all.

It's all of this.

Yes.

Oh, boy.

That's lemony.

Next comes your wheat.

You add the wheat and the olive oil.

Okay.

I would go light on the light on the olive oil.

And so I'm actually making a dressing between the, Right.

the between the lemon juice and the, and the olive oil.

This is extra virgin.

Yes, it's extra virgin.

It's about a fourth of a cup.

There you go.

Is that enough?

Should I put more?

Salt and pepper.

Should I put more in there.

I don't know.

That's enough.

I think it looks oily.

Moist enough.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good Now you have some that you made.

Yeah.

So you want to add that together or, let's get back here.

let's do that.

Okay.

Because this was made last night.

And if you ever want to prepare tabbouleh ahead of time, you can make it all the night before and have it ready.

Yeah.

We're going to mix the two together.

Yeah.

So we'll have a nice big, bright serving of it.

Oh, boy.

And that's it.

I made tabbouleh!

I love this.

It's not so hard is it.

No, no.

Especially if you have the processor and especially if you have somebody like you.

I'm going to do something that I've always wanted to do in this kitchen.

I'm going to rinse my hand.

While you're rinsing your hands, I can tell you this is a great salad to serve with your meats that you cook on the grill.

It's easy to prepare ahead of time.

And if if the man in the house does a grilling outside and you don't have to cook, you have this and your meat and your vegetables.

Oh, this looks great.

Now we have that.

Okay, let's.

So let's put up a serving of this as if we were going to have a a little party here.

And let's get out some of these bowls there and, and there you have a serving dish.

Okay.

We have this nice serving dish.

We're going to make it look pretty.

Very good.

Now, what do you like to grill?

I don't grill, my sons do the grilling.

Yeah, but we use we have shish kebab, chicken, any kind of meat that anybody prefers.

This goes great with them all.

It goes great with grilled fish.

If you're a vegetarian.

Well I've often had this.

You can put it on.

Think.

Oh you're adventuresome.

There we go.

Good.

Mountain of tabbouleh.

And you saw it here on QED Cooks.

I got to put this, lettuce around it.

You have this nice lettuce.

Okay.

Yeah.

That you.

Oh, this is a of a garnish.

We have Eric here helping us make a little garnishes.

So everything looks a little fancier than it would in my house, because we probably just sit down with a piece of bread.

Now.

Piece of bread.

Talking about a piece of bread.

You have brought in some bread.

You make this yourself.

Yes.

And I know because you brought some in the last time you were here, when we did the ethnic cooking show, and it was so fabulous.

And then I called you.

Was it yesterday?

And you said, wait a minute I have to shut the oven, and I'm working on making some bread.

Marian makes the, the flatbreads.

I'm going to take a piece out of it right here.

These are more leavened than the than the, the what do they call those pita bread breads that I see?

Yes.

But they have an amazingly wonderful, meaty, fresh flavor.

I love this bread.

And if I could figure out how I could get one of those ovens in my house, I'd ask you for the recipe.

But I have a feeling it wouldn't quite turn out the way yours does unless you have.

Okay, now we garnish.

We garnish with grape leaves too, when they're in season.

But if you don't have grap leaves, you can use the lettuce.

Okay?

And you can actually take a leaf and put a spoon of tabbouleh inside and eat them together.

And you're getting a lot of healthy ingredients.

Now, you've brought something I want to I want to bring out here because you brought some other healthy ingredients.

This is probably my favorite Middle Eastern food is hummus.

And you brought along some of these delicious olives, which I have to taste one.

Okay.

What do they call these?

Greek olives.

Just Greek.

I call them the Kalamata.

The Kalamata olive.

Yes.

Okay.

Folks, I should get the pit out of my mouth, just, like, drop my pants.

With a little bit of the feta the cheese cut in a cube.

And you have this to serve as the sort of the main salad.

Sure, but I like to mix the tabbouleh and the hummus in a piece of bread.

And as soon as we get off the air, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

And have a, these wonderful Middle Eastern, accompaniments.

And it's a great meal and it's a great classic salad that everybody out there, can can make.

This is a salad.

You can make the the the grain is easy to come by.

And this is healthful, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Is a salad that you can eat with some feeling that you've you haven't done bad by yourself.

No fats.

Okay.

So that's that's an important thing.

And as people who are watching their diets and so on and and, and that's why this particular cooking show has been, very interesting because a lot of salads are that way.

They're sort of healthful.

It's a great way to eat, man.

I don't know what else to say except thank you for being with us and bringing you all of this wonderful food.

And to think, some people view parsley as only a garnish.

After that program, I started to grow parsley in my little backyard herb plot.

It was so prolific and hearty that I had fresh parsley for nearly nine months of the year.

Another great dish that comes out of the Middle Eastern tradition is couscous.

When I first saw couscous, I thought it was some kind of grain, like wheat or rice or barley.

And then I found out it's actually a kind of pasta.

The great thing is how easy it is to make and how well it absorbs the flavors around it.

Here's a recipe from our salad show.

I'm going to make something that I think, you know, I never was involved in making any of this the first time I had it, it was a revelation to me how easy it was and how versatile, an ingredient couscous is.

Now, Nancy, I want I want you.

I want you to know I need your help, too.

But, Couscous looks like a grain.

And actually I, I got this down at the strip.

There are boxes of this pre-made, you know, sort of pre-cooked or pre flavored that you'll see by the rice and whatnot in the supermarket.

But you can buy it just like this, just loose.

I've found that it is not a grain.

It's actually like macaron in that it's made from flour and and then ground into these little, tiny, tiny, tiny little granules.

But here's, here's the thing, you can cook this very simply, and then it attracts the flavors of anything you put in it, like any pasta does.

So that's what I want to do today.

I'm going to make a recipe that I actually have adapted for an apricot, and pistachio and basil salad with couscous.

That sounds yummy.

And, the first thing that you have to do, is to get some water, boiling.

Okay.

And then you add about a quarter of a cup of olive oil.

I'm going to measure it for everybody's sake here because everybody goes had, you know, that was a quarter of a cup.

And I'm one of those, you know, it's funny that the recipe said four tablespoons.

Well, as far as I know, four tablespoons is a quarter of a cup.

So, that' what I'm going to put into here.

And then you have to put in some salt.

You have to put in two teaspoons of salt, which I don't have here with me, my salt disappeared.

And then.

Oh yeah, here it is.

Okay.

Where is the measuring spoon?

All right, all right.

Teasing out, teasing.

It says two teaspoons.

Here's one teaspoons.

What I okay.

All right.

Let's let's do it.

Let's just test your I'm going to get that in there.

There.

One.

Pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah it was, very good Chris.

All right.

Now measure the second one.

I'm impressed.

Okay.

So that's what you put in there now into the couscous.

Actually, you know, as far as I'm concerned, right into the, into the water, you can put, two teaspoons of, cinnamon.

Oh, and there's any question about it?

Throw it in.

Yeah.

I mean, it's it's wonderful.

This couscous go hand in hand.

This one is a very flavorful.

I love cinnamon, okay.

And with apricot and also then a half of a teaspoon of allspice which is a very, very fragrant and strong spice.

So just a little bit of this I think of it like cloves, you know, it's, it has so much.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is boiling.

I'm going to turn this off.

And now I'm going to, smells middle Eastern already.

Get these apricots, which are, just sort of regular dried apricots.

And I'm just going to slice them very thinly with, you know, on the cutting board.

There's a way of doing this with a scissor that somebody showed me that, I guess this, Might be me, it makes it a little bit easier because they don't stick.

I've done dates that way Because I made apricot jam once.

My mother taught me that cutting.

Cutting keeps them all separated.

Right?

This is much faster.

Well, I think so.

And if you, you know, if you like bigger pieces of apricot you can make it a little bigger.

But I like to make it fairly fine.

Not that the pieces are small.

No, but they're they're chopped or sliced very thinly.

You're so handy with a knife.

And you can do that.

The reason why I like to do it is that this is they soften better and easier when you when they're smaller, when they're smaller, and you put it because it's well you'll see what I'm going to do.

I wait with bated breath this is like any recipe for rice or whatever.

This is three cups of water.

Now, I'll tell you that I use chicken broth when I make this at home.

But you can use chicken broth or water.

Chicken broth.

Just just sort of enhances the flavor of it for me.

And I always have a lot of chicken broth around.

I'm going to put in the apricots, and I'm going to pu in the couscous with the spices, and I'm going to give this one quick swirl around with a spoon.

The flavor starts to come up from that cinnamon.

Some day smell of vision will come into your home.

Okay.

And then I put the cover on it fires off, covers on, fires off and covers on.

And this has got to sit for about five minutes, which just gives you enough time to prepare the rest of the ingredients.

All right.

I'm going to chop some scallions.

Well, there's a lot of scallions.

I don't think we need this many, let's get rid of this.

How many scallions?

Here, You know, every scallion is a different size.

I'm cutting these into fairly, real thin.

Now, what is my recipe?

Say, for scallions?

About a half and half a cup or three quarters of a cup of a cup.

Well, you see, the thing about it is that this makes a whole lot.

That's true.

Like rice just explodes.

Yeah, it really does.

Now we're getting close to three quarters of a cup.

What do you think?

But I throw in a little bit more just because I really love the taste of green onions.

And I'd rather air on the side of too much than too little.

Okay, okay.

Should we measure it and find out?

Nah, All right, just a thought so.

There's there's that.

And then what you need is some fresh basil, which you always have.

And I don't.

Well, I have a garden.

I have to admit my I have some in my garden.

I have eight little plants, but they're not big grown up plants like this one yet.

I had to buy these.

Oh.

It's early.

Yeah.

And it's so nice to think that this basil, which costs almost $2, is going to be going to be free in my garden real soon.

Now, I don't like to be stingy with this stuff because it really adds to the flavor.

So I get a nice big bunch of it, and it's so hard to cut, though.

Well, I make what they call a chiffonade Chiffonade means that you you wrap it all up like this.

Like this?

Yeah.

And then you cut it into very thin Slivers.

Slivers.

Chiffonade.

The thing that you don't want to do with basil is work it too much with the knife, because it turns it black and ugly and bruised.

Okay, now I'm not going to wait because this has to sit for five minutes.

And actually, you want to let this cool after it sits for five minutes and even refrigerate it, then you want to bring it back to room temperature.

Guess what I have.

Oh, what's the point of refrigerating it and then cooling it to room temperature?

Well, I mean, you could just I mean, if you were ready to eat it, you know, just let it come to, to room temperature and stop there.

But I made this last night, and they have let this come up.

It's not cold.

I don't want it to be cold to serve.

Okay?

And this is just what will come out of this pot.

And I'll show you this later.

As as as we go along.

Because the couscous, the oil, the apricots.

Right.

All right.

And the spices.

And this goes into this bowl and we just sort of break it up like that.

And now I'm going to add the scallions or the green onions.

Interesting combination.

And the basil.

And here's my favorite part.

Absolutely.

My favorite part.

These are pistachio nuts.

The real thing before they've been made red before they've been made red.

And these are shelled too.

Oh yeah.

And they have no shells on them.

Right.

And I, you know, actually that's a quarter of a cup.

Joy, could you get me the rest of those?

We want more, I want more.

This is a big bowl of couscous.

Thanks.

No, it's one and a quarter cups.

Oh, one and a quarter.

Oh, that's why you want more than a quarter cup.

So I'm going to put them all in because, you know, the idea of being able to eat pistachios now, you want you don't want to put this in before you're ready to eat it, because you don't want the pistachios to get soggy.

Now this.

Oh, that is a meal right there it is.

Well, it's a great accompaniment, I'll tell you that.

Yes, it is.

In many countries in the world it's a meal.

And for many people like myself, it's a lunch.

Vegetarian.

You got it right here.

Don't use the chicken broth.

Obviously.

Just use the water as we as we've done here.

But this is couscous salad.

When you're making couscous as a side dish, make twice as much as you need.

Then save the leftovers to make a salad on another night.

I think I'm going to make couscous tonight.

I love saying that, couscous.

Well, thanks for being with us.

And as we always say, we do it for you, but we can't do it without you.

Keep watching.

This is how you start out making your chicken stock.

First, you need a nice stockpot.

Need a pot that's big enough to make it worthwhile to make chicken stock in it and into that pot.

What I've put are some chicken pieces, some chicken trimmings.

Some.

When I get chicken wings, I just take the tips off and put them into the freezer and hold on to them, put the skins and the bones from when I bone chicken, and I'm going to put that into a pot full of boiling of water and bring it to a boil.

Now, the three ingredients that make up what the French chefs refer to as a mirepoix are onion, celery and carrots.

And going to have to make sure that of all the vegetables that we might put into here, the flavoring of those three ingredients are going to be there.

I'm just going to take some celery.

This is all going to be strained out later.

So it doesn't have to be fancy.

I'm just going to break it into pieces.

I always like to make sure that I have some of the leafy parts of the celery, because it adds an extra flavor to it.

I'm going to put that in there, and I'm going to break up the rest of this celery.

Now the onion.

There it is.

It's got the skins on it and all of that stuff.

I'm going to put the whole thing right in here.

And the reaso is that those skins on the onion give the chicken stock a wonderful golden color.

I used to make my chicken stock with chopped up onions and, and then I would look at other people's chicken stock.

And it was so nice and rich and golden.

I said, how do you do that?

Well, they said, we put the skins of the onion in as well.

I'm going to put in some carrots.

And again, I'm not going to bother chopping them up.

These are those little easy carrots that you can buy in little packages.

I'm going to put them in there and I'm just going to stir that around a bit.

And then I have here some these are just some vegetable trimmings.

We were making some of th dishes and I have some leftover, peppers and onions and, some chopped, some not.

I'm just going to put it all into here because all of this is going to add more flavor to this chicken stock.

So it's going to be sort of like a chicken and vegetable stock.

I'm going to put that in there okay.

So far so good.

And then I'm going to season this with just two things.

And that is some bay leaves and some peppercorns.

The bay leave I, well, sort of tradition with But they add a nice under, flavor of of the herbs and then the peppercorns add a little bit of substance to that stock flavor.

And I'm just going to let that come to a boil.

And once it's come to a boil, I'm going to turn it down to a simmer.

And I'm going to let that stay for about an hour.

After an hour, what I'll do is take the chicken pieces out because there were some whole pieces and take the meat off of the bone, return the bones in the skin to this pot and let that cook for another two hours.

So it's a total of three hours of cooking time at a very low simmer, at which point I will strain that off and put it into a container in the refrigerator.

After it's cool to room temperature, and then the at the top of that will form a layer of fat, the chicken fat that will congeal on the top and you can remove it.

And at the end you'll have quarts and quarts of delicious rich chicken stock, no fat, because you will have removed that fat amount on there.

And that is how you can make your own chicken stock at home.