Fattoush-ish
I love salads — all the fresh fruits and vegetables!!! — and I’m always in the mood for a salad, a big salad*, at least once a week. It makes me feel healthy even though I tend to overdo the dressing and load it with tons of (not so healthy) stuff.
I rarely write salad recipe posts though. When I make salads for myself I tend to toss together whatever produce I have on hand. There’s not a whole lot to post/write about because face it, you would be inundated with posts that say things like “look what random healthy shit I decided to slap together and call a salad today!” It may sound exciting, creative, or lazy to some, but my salad routine is actually super boring and it’s getting to the point that it’s all starting to taste the same. Hoping to get out of a boring salad rut, I started to look at salads from other countries for inspiration. Salad Niçoise, karedok, horiatiki salata, salpicón de res…I had ground sumac on hand so fattoush, an Arabic bread salad, caught my eye.
A traditional fattoush uses toasted or fried pita bread and a variety of chopped vegetables like purslane, radishes, and mint. The salad is tossed in dressing but the dressing is what makes this salad unique. You get a nice unique tang from the sumac, a purple-ish spice made from sumac berries, that makes every bite savory and refreshing.
To make this salad my own, I added a variety of sliced vegetables (and fruits, if you wanna get all specific), omitted purslane (which I could not find) and made it more about the leafy greens. I also used pita chips instead of toasting my own because I already had pita chips on hand.
For 4 servings:
Dressing (adapted from Food & Wine):
- 1/2 c. extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 lemon, juice and zest
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 2 tbsp. ground sumac
- 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
Salad:
- 2 to 3 c. pita chips
- 4 plum tomatoes, sliced
- 1 cucumber, sliced
- 8 radishes, sliced
- 1 large shallot, sliced
- 6 c. chopped romaine lettuce
- 2 c. baby arugula leaves
- 1 c. loosely packed hand-torn fresh mint leaves
For the dressing, whisk together all of the ingredients; set aside. For the salad, toss together all of the ingredients. Pour dressing over salad, to taste, before serving.
