Middle Eastern Fattoush salad

Where has the Summer gone? Did we even have one?! I have spent most of the Summer in a mac and sandals – a very British Summer look! Although the weather isn't feeling particularly summery I thought I'd share this Middle Eastern salad that I adore. This Fattoush salad recipe is inspired by Moro, I've recommended their cookbook before and I'll recommend it again! I love the mixture of fresh herbs in this dish and the flavour of the zaatar and sumac in the salad dressing.

Zatar is actually a herb that grows wild in the Lebanon, but I haven't managed to find any over here in London. If you buy zaatar in the UK it will normally be a spice blend made from dried thyme sometimes oregano, always sumac and roasted ground sesame seeds. I actually made my own zaatar blend for this recipe, more to follow on that in another post.

Fattoush salad, serves 4

2 pitta bread (I prefer wholemeal, but white is fine. We will toast this later)

½ cucumber

Head of romaine lettuce, or any crunchy lettuce

4 radishes

Small bunch of mint, coriander and flat leaf parsley

10 cherry tomatoes

Dressing

1 clove garlic crushed to a paste with salt

Juice of ½ a lemon

1 tsp sumac

1 tsp zaatar

5 tbsp oil (I use rapeseed oil, some people may prefer olive oil)

salt and black pepper

The pita bread adds fantastic crunch to the salad. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Split the pitta bread lengthways and use either melted butter or oil to brush on each side. Put the pitta bread halves on a rack in the middle of the oven and bake for about 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool, once old break them up into chunks. Those of you with a keen eye will see that I didn't include pitta in salad on this occasion, it was midweek and I didn't have any in so I made it without.

Wash the vegetables and herbs and spin the herbs dry in a salad spinner (this is the most used piece of kit in my kitchen). Take the cucumber and cut it in half, take the seeds out then dice it. Chop the radishes as you like them, personally I cut them into thick slices and then quarter the slices. I slice the romaine head, wash and spin it dry! Rough chop the herbs.

Mix the dressing in a jar and give it a good shake – I’d recommend feeling your way with the lemon and oil: perhaps start with 3 or 4 tbsp of oil and most of the lemon half, taste it and see if you want to add more oil or more lemon. As my Mum taught me, you can always add more of something to dish that you are cooking, but you can't take it out.

I chose not to include tomatoes as I'm not the biggest fan of raw tomatoes in dishes, but if you wanted to include them then you would need to rinse and dry them then cut them into quarters.

Now it’s assembly time. I wouldn’t mix this much before I want to use it as the toasted pitta and lettuce will lose their crunch. Mix everything together and add as much of the dressing as you would like – again, feel your way, some people love a lot of dressing on their salad, some people less.