I’m not going to lie, Day 2 of our meatless week was pretty much phoning it in. I originally made this salad to go with Chicken Schawarma, but we liked it so much that we eat it now as an entree. We have it at least twice a month, possibly more.
Fattoush Salad
I found the recipe on the Food Network website, nestled in a page of Lebanese side dishes. It’s light, refreshing, and very unique. I calculated it at about 6 servings of 206 calories each (the calories are mostly from the olive oil in the dressing). Aside from the dressing, I rarely measure the ingredients for this salad – I just chop up what I have and it always turns out great.
Preparing the Salad
Like the vegetable stew, this dish requires a lot of chopping. We actually prepped it the day before while we were already in the kitchen chopping up a storm for the vegetable stew. I combined the lettuce, mint, parsley, scallions, and Sumac in a container and stored it separately from the tomatoes and cucumbers. We use grape or cherry tomatoes because they’re usually more convenient and quicker to chop. The day we had the salad for dinner, all that was left to do was make the dressing.
Impressions
This salad has really become something we crave. It has a freshness that screams summer, and I’m hoping to grow mountains of mint and parsley this year so we can use them in our cooking. The herbs at the grocery store are pretty puny right now, but dried ones just won’t cut it for this salad. The dressing is very simple, so I’d also recommend using fresh squeezed lemon juice if possible (1/2 cup should be the juice of two lemons).
A note about the ingredient Sumac – I don’t consider it crucial to the dish. I was only able to find it at an Asian grocery store, in a huge container, and I’m not sure how much it really adds to the salad aside from an interesting visual. It resembles chili powder, but smells sort of like tobacco.
