Grain Cooking : Tales From the Bulgur Belt

Bulgur is more than just something to make tabbouleh with. It’s also more than a quick-cooking rice substitute. In its Near Eastern home, bulgur’s special qualities--the sweet earthiness of wheat, the textural possibilities of its graininess, the fact that it can be mixed with other ingredients without further cooking--make it the basis of a wide variety of soups and stews and snacks, both meaty and vegetarian.

Its quick-cooking qualities are certainly appreciated in the Near East, of course. Bulgur has replaced raw wheat grains in a number of ancient dishes that once upon a time had to cook all night. And tabbouleh isn’t a health-food cliche there; it’s a light, refreshing treat.

Bulgur is the sort of thing that couldn’t have been invented in a cold climate. These days, bulgur is usually made in factories, but the traditional technique (still used in small villages) depends on the fact that in the Near East, wheat is harvested in July or August, when the weather is still hot, rather than in the fall.

When the crop is in, people boil the wheat grains in huge pots a yard or two across, a job that requires somebody to stay up all night watching the fire and stirring the pot from time to time. When the wheat grains swell and are thoroughly cooked, they are spread out to dry on the flat rooftops. Traditionally the wheat is carried upstairs by children, who are paid in spoonfuls of the tasty brown crust that has formed on the bottom of the pot.

When the summer sun has dried the wheat and the grains have shriveled and hardened, the wheat is hulled. Then a traveling artisan comes around to grind the bulgur in a portable, hand-turned mill. He doesn’t grind it to the fineness of flour, because it’s made from a hard wheat, which resists grinding fine; like durum semolina, it comes out more or less as grits. The ground bulgur is sieved into three or four size grades, ranging from coarse, for soups and stews, to very fine, for particular uses such as certain delicate pilafs.

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The essence of bulgur is that it is precooked. As anybody who has made tabbouleh knows, just soaking it in water is enough to make it ready to eat (although perhaps in need of some flavoring). Unlike raw grain, it can be chewed and digested without further cooking.

This is obviously a great convenience, but nobody seems to know exactly when or where this clever idea arose. Near Eastern cookbooks from the 10th and 13th centuries don’t say anything about bulgur. The reason might be that medieval books mostly described haute cuisine and ignored many everyday foods, but their silence might also mean that bulgur was simply invented later than the 13th Century.

Unfortunately, all the theories about the origin of bulgur tend to fizzle out at some point. A lot of people believe the Turks invented it, and the word bulgur is often confidently said to be Turkish, but there’s no linguistic reason to think so. Nothing like the word is found in any language related to Turkish--not even in Azerbaijani, which is practically a dialect of the language spoken in Turkey.

The likeliest candidate for the origin of the word appears to be palkhurd , which is a Kurdish word for “crushed,” referring to crushed grain; its basic meaning is something like “small pebbles” or maybe “crushed with stones.” The word bulghur has the same meaning (“crushed grain”) in Persian--in the 14th Century a wisecracking Persian poet wrote, “I obtained a thousand bulghur : one spoonful of grits from the rounded soup pot”--and it’s conceivable that palkhurd , or something like it, might have become bulghur in Persian.

This theory would be a bit more convincing if the unique thing about bulgur were that it was crushed, but raw cracked wheat has always been around. Unfortunately, we can’t tell whether the 14th-Century bulghur was precooked, and modern Iranian cooks rarely use bulgur. To add to the confusion, Kurds themselves actually call bulgur sawar , a word they borrowed from their Armenian neighbors, who call it tsavar .

At any rate, it’s clear where bulgur arose: somewhere around the southern border of present-day Turkey. A lot of nationalities rub shoulders here--Arabs, Armenians, Turks, Kurds and the Aramaic-speaking Christians known as Assyrians. Whichever group it originated among, the Turks were the ones who spread bulgur to places within their empire such as Egypt, Yemen, Cyprus and Tunisia.

In these new homes, bulgur gained only a relatively small foothold. It’s still in Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq and Turkey and among the Armenians--in the Armenian republic, and even more so among the western Armenians who escaped the massacres in Turkey at the beginning of this century--that bulgur is most used.

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So what do they make from it? Tabbouleh, of course, the Lebanese and Syrian appetizer that spread widely in the Near East and beyond during this century. The original version is a parsley and mint salad given a little heft with bulgur, not the green-flecked porridge a lot of health food restaurants make. It also has a heartier Turkish cousin called kisir , made with hot peppers in place of mint.

The most obvious use of bulgur is as a whole grain like rice. Cooks everywhere stuff vegetables with it and make it into pilaf. Burghul bi-dfin is a rich Syrian pilaf loaded with garbanzos, tiny onions and chunks of stewed lamb. This, like keshkek-- a sort of meat porridge known to Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish, Iraqi and (in ancient times) Iranian cooks--may be one of the dishes that was made with whole wheat before bulgur was invented.

Like rice, bulgur goes into soups, above all in Armenia, a bulgur-oriented land known for very hearty soups. In spas and its more substantial cousin tanabur , the flavoring is yogurt, and kirchik gets a little sourness from sauerkraut.

But the major use of bulgur is kibbeh--also known as kubba (Iraq), kobeiba (Egypt), bulgur koftesi (Turkey) and kuefte (western Armenia). One Arabic cookbook gives altogether 30 kibbeh recipes, including a couple made from gazelle meat. Kibbeh could be described as a glorified meatloaf/meatball mixture, made by moistening a cup or two of bulgur and then pounding or grinding it with a chopped onion and a pound of meat until it’s a smooth paste. (Using a very fine grade of bulgur and a food processor, this can take a minute or so, not all afternoon, as it does with a mortar and pestle.)

Kibbeh can be grilled on a skewer, baked in a pan (like a sort of meat baklava), deep-fried or poached in liquid--broth, yogurt sauce, tahineh sauce, tomato sauce, or even a hearty vegetable soup, which is preferred in northern Iraq. For both frying or poaching, the mixture is usually made into a sort of torpedo-shaped meatball with a stuffing of fried meat, onions, nuts, raisins and the like. In some places, such as the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the meatball is large and rather flat, made by joining two thin patties of meat around the filling.

Christians form a near majority in Lebanon and a sizable minority in Syria and northern Iraq. To observe their fast days, they have invented meatless forms of kibbeh, such as kibbet al-rahib (“monk’s kibbeh”: balls of bulgur cooked with fried onions) and kibbet al-hileh (“trick kibbeh,” where the balls of bulgur are stewed with lentils).

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During Lent, Armenians make topik , a larger bulgur ball that includes ground garbanzos, with a walnut and currant stuffing. The Armenian vospov kuefteh is balls of bulgur and lentils flavored with chiles, parsley and mint. In fact, bulgur and lentils often go together in the Near East, both in pilafs and in stews.

In Syria, marshusha is bulgur cooked with spinach, black-eyed peas and lots of onions fried in olive oil. Shalbatu is bulgur with fried onions and eggplants and abu shalhub is a stew of bulgur with fried eggplants and cabbage, flavored with garlic and cilantro. In Turkey, moistened bulgur is mixed with tomatoes, onions, walnuts, peppers and herbs and made into patties called batirik that are served raw. The Assyrian Christians make bread dough with flour and bulgur that’s been soaked in water overnight and bake it into little pizzas with a topping of tahineh.

The part of the world where bulgur originated is also the general area where wheat was domesticated in the first place, and it makes uses of wheat that aren’t found elsewhere, such as kishk and tarkhana. There are innumerable recipes for these products, but typically you soak bulgur with yeast or yogurt and let it sit for a couple of days. Some versions are eaten raw, others are dried and added to soup, and still others are squeezed for their sour juices, which flavor soups. In Egypt, yogurt and bulgur are kneaded together, formed into balls and dried into the sun to make little balls of kishk that are eaten as a sour, chewy snack.

All these traditional fermented or semi-fermented foods have a combination of sharp flavor and pungent aroma that doesn’t seem likely to sweep this nation off its feet the way tabbouleh did. Of course, you never know.

Finally, there are some sweet bulgur dishes, such as the Armenian bulghurapur , a soup of bulgur, grape syrup and walnuts. The Turks make a similar dish called kesme bulamac , adding sesame and spices.

Oddly, despite the sweet, earthy wheat flavor of of bulgur, people in Syria and Iraq often claim to prefer rice. Rice is both milder and more aromatic that bulgur, it’s famously easy to digest, and it cooks up whiter, making for a more striking appearance on the table. Perhaps most important, it doesn’t grow in the bulgur belt, so it’s an expensive import, a prestige grain.

So a Lebanese proverb goes, “Honor to rice--and bulgur can hang itself.” In an Iraqi folk song, somebody asks, “O people of heaven, o people of hell, what do you eat?” and the people in heaven turn out to live on rice and apricots, while the people in hell eat bulgur and tomatoes.

But hey, that doesn’t sound so bad.

Armenian cuisine is rich in soups, many of them made tart with yogurt and thickened with bulgur. This version is flavored with sauerkraut. From “Armianskaia Kulinaria” by A. S. Piruzian.

SAUERKRAUT-BULGUR SOUP

(Kirchik)

1 small onion, chopped

1/4 cup butter

2 3/4 cups sauerkraut

1/4 cup tomato puree

1 large russet potato, diced

1/2 cup bulgur, fine grade

2 quarts rich chicken or veal stock

Salt, pepper

Sliced green pepper

Parsley

In 5-quart pot, saute onion in butter until golden. In bowl soak sauerkraut in water, drain and chop. Add to onions and cook until done, adding water if mixture gets too dry. Add tomato puree. Saute 5 to 7 minutes.

Add potatoes, bulgur and stock and cook 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with sliced green pepper and parsley. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

351 calories; 2,834 mg sodium; 33 mg cholesterol; 15 grams fat; 40 grams carbohydrates; 16 grams protein; 2.65 grams fiber.

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From “Nevin Halici’s Turkish Cookbook” by Nevin Halici.

BULGUR PILAF, KAVURMA FASHION

(Bulgur Pilavi,

Kavurma Yontemi)

6 tablespoons butter

1 medium onion, finely chopped

About 1/4 cup serrano chiles, seeded and chopped

1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons bulgur, coarse grade

1 large tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped

Salt

2 cups beef or chicken stock, boiling

Mint

Heat butter in saucepan. Add onion and saute over medium heat 5 minutes. Add chiles to taste. Saute 3 minutes. Add bulgur. Saute 4 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add tomato. Cook 4 to 5 minutes.

Season to taste with salt. Add boiling stock and cover pan. Cook 3 minutes on medium heat, then reduce heat to low and cook until bulgur absorbs liquid and holes appear on surface, 10 to 15 minutes.

Reduce heat to very low. Place dish towel over mouth of saucepan and place lid over towel. Let steam 20 minutes. Remove lid and towel, stir with slotted spoon, lifting gently from bottom of pan. Recover with towel and lid. Let stand 10 minutes more. Season to taste with chopped mint. Serve. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

369 calories; 652 mg sodium; 47 mg cholesterol; 19 grams fat; 44 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams protein; 1.73 grams fiber.

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Wheat, onions, garbanzos, lamb and yogurt. This easy, filling stew has an indescribably wholesome, earthy flavor. Choose the onions to be as similar in size as possible.

BULGUR WITH BURIED TREASURE

(Burghul bi-Dfin)

1 pound lamb stewing meat, cut into cubes

1/2 cup butter

12 small (walnut-sized) onions

2 1/2 cups water

1/2 cup dried garbanzos, soaked overnight, or 1 1/4 cups canned

2 cups bulgur, coarse grade

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Yogurt

In skillet saute meat in 2 tablespoons butter until browned. Remove meat. In same skillet saute whole onions in butter until pale-yellow. Return meat to skillet. Add water and dried garbanzos, if using. Cook until meat and garbanzos are tender.

Remove some of meat and onions. Add bulgur and cook over low heat until done. Return meat, onions and canned garbanzos, if using, and stir in remaining butter. Add salt and cinnamon. Serve with yogurt. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

661 calories; 1411 mg sodium; 117 mg cholesterol; 29 grams fat; 74 grams carbohydrates; 30 grams protein; 2.50 grams fiber.

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A vegetarian “kibbeh” with lentils in place of the meat. From “The Cuisine of Armenia” by Sonia Uvezian.

LENTIL AND BULGUR CAKES

(Vospov Kuefteh)

1 cup dried lentils

3 cups water

Salt

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup bulgur, fine grade

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup finely chopped green or sweet red pepper

1/4 cup finely chopped green onions (white part and 2 inches of green tops)

1/4 cup finely chopped parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint

Paprika

Combine lentils, water and dash salt in heavy saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, then simmer until lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Add more hot water if needed. Stir in 1/2 cup butter and bulgur. Simmer 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and cover. Set aside 15 minutes.

In heavy skillet, melt remaining 1/4 cup butter over moderate heat. Add onion. Saute until golden brown, stirring frequently. In large mixing bowl combine sauteed onions, lentil and bulgur mixture. Dipping hands occasionally into bowl of warm water, knead mixture until well blended, 2 to 3 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons sweet pepper, 3 tablespoons green onions, 3 tablespoons parsley and 3 tablespoons mint to mixture and mix well. Adjust seasonings for taste.

Keeping hands moistened, form mixture into 1/2 cup patties. Arrange on serving dish. Sprinkle with reserved sweet pepper, green onions, parsley and mint. Season to taste with paprika. Serve with cucumber and tomato salad. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

573 calories; 437 mg sodium; 93 mg cholesterol; 35 grams fat; 51 grams carbohydrates; 18 grams protein; 3.27 grams fiber.

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The “trick” in this Syrian-Lebanese vegetable soup is that there’s no meat in the kibbeh “meatballs.” The idea that a vegetarian dish is a deception (vegetarian dolmas are known as yalanji, the Turkish word for “counterfeit”) goes back at least 1,200 years in the Near East.

“TRICK” KIBBEH

(Kibbet il-Hileh)

1 cup bulgur, fine grade, soaked 1/2 hour in enough water to cover

1/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup thinly sliced green onions

1/4 cup finely chopped mint

1/2 cup finely chopped parsley

9 cups chicken stock

1 cup lentils

Juice 3 lemons

2 to 4 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 cup olive oil

1 lemon

In bowl mix bulgur, flour, 1/2 tablespoon salt, cinnamon, green onions, mint and parsley. Add enough water to make thick dough. Roll into 24 very firmly packed balls size of large marbles. Set aside to dry.

Put 9 cups chicken stock in pot, add lentils and bring to boil 10 minutes. Add 2 1/2 tablespoons salt, reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

Add bulgur balls and boil 5 minutes. Add lemon juice, garlic and oil. Simmer until balls are done, 10 minutes. Garnish with thin lemon slices. Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

289 calories; 2,663 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 14 grams fat; 35 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams protein; 1.73 grams fiber.

Food styling by Donna Deane and Staci Miller