Fattoush is a vibrant, zingy salad that’s crunchy with flatbread, tangy with lemon juice, juicy with tomatoes, crisp with cucumbers and capsicum, and super-fresh with herbs and leafy greens.
It’s a kapow sort of salad. Sorry, KAPOW.
It’s also a country salad, which means it’s very forgiving, because country people can only use what they have. I’ve made fattoush with rocket leaves and cos leaves, and Lebanon’s beloved purslane – all good – but I adore it with kale, which gives it a really rustic edge.
Herbs are crucial – parsley, yes, but also dill and mint if you have them.
And the bread, don’t forget the bread. Usually, Lebanese flatbread is crisped by grilling or frying in oil, then broken into pieces and tossed in the dressing to soften and take on the flavours. If you want to keep it crisp, just add it later, as a garnish.
The dressing is just extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, with a little crushed garlic, sea salt, pepper and sumac if you have it.
REMIND ME, WHAT’S SUMAC? It’s a sourish, astringent, reddish-brown seed from the Middle East that’s usually found as a powder. Adds a lemony tang to chicken, fish any sort of salad, and especially eggs and avocado.
STRIP YOUR KALE, THEN MASSAGE TO RELIEVE TENSION.
The best way to deal with kale is wash the leaves, shake dry, then hold each stalk upside down and tear off the leaves from top to bottom. Chop or tear the leaves into manageable pieces.
Even so, they’re still tough and feisty, and need a quick massage to make them soft and approachable. In this recipe, you massage them with a little of the dressing, which not only breaks down the fibre, it virtually marinates and seasons the leaves at the same time. Instead of a big pile of tough, almost prickly leaves, you end up with a smaller amount (it shrinks!) of soft, mossy, tender greenery. So, fattoush me.
KALE FATTOUSH
half red onion, very finely sliced
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp sumac
1 bunch kale
2 pita breads, plus drizzle of olive oil
half Lebanese cucumber, peeled and sliced
half red capsicum core removed, finely sliced into rings
3 pink radishes, sliced
4 tomatoes, varying sizes, sliced or diced
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 tbsp mint leaves
2 tbsp dill fronds
Dressing:
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses, optional
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed
Toss the sliced red onion with the vinegar, sumac and a good pinch of sea salt and leave while you prep the rest of the salad.
Wash the kale, shake dry, and strip the leaves from the stalks, discarding stalks. Roughly chop or tear the leaves into manageable bits.
To make the dressing, whisk lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, pepper and crushed garlic in a large bowl.
Toss the kale leaves in 1 to 2 tablespoons of the dressing, and gently massage the leaves, until they soften into submission and no longer fight back.
Toss the cucumber, capsicum, tomato, radishes, parsley, mint and dill in the remaining dressing, then add the kale and lightly toss.
Brush the bread with a little olive oil and fry in a dry pan until tanned on both sides.
Break or tear the bread into small pieces and lightly toss through the salad.
Arrange the salad on a large serving platter and strew with the lightly pickled red onion, to serve. Serves four as a salad.
# Tip: The massaged and dressed kale keeps its integrity for hours, so feel free to do ahead – or fill a lunchbox with left-overs the next day.
# Break with tradition, and add avocado, chickpeas, or feta.
Tip: Using pomegranate molasses as well as lemon juice will greatly add to the kapow effect.
# This is brilliant served with kofta or spicy sausages like merguez. Also hummus, labneh, roasted eggplant. Or Turkish cacik, the Turkish yoghurt and cucumber dip that is very similar to Greek tzatziki, that is pronounced (mostly) ja-jik.
CACIK
200 g thick natural yoghurt (Greek-style)
Half Lebanese cucumber, peeled
Half tsp sea salt
1 garlic clove, grated
2 tbsp mint leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp dill fronds, finely chopped
If you have time, hang the yoghurt to thicken it. Place a strainer over a bowl, line it with muslin, add the yoghurt, and leave in the fridge for a few hours, for the whey to drip into the bowl.
Grate the cucumber, mix with sea salt and set aside for 15 minutes, then squeeze out excess moisture and stir into the yoghurt with the garlic, mint and dill.
By all means, add 1 tsp cumin, coriander, dried mint or baharat to the mix.
REMIND ME, WHAT’S BAHARAT? An Arabic spice blend of black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cinnamon or cassia bark, cloves, cumin, cardamom, nutmeg and sweet paprika. Great with seafood, or as a rub for grilled lamb. If you want to serve kofta with your fattoush but life has only given you sausages, skin them and mush the sausage meat with baharat and harissa, then form into little flat logs, and pan-fry or grill.
VALE, GREG MALOUF
I’ve just realized that I only came up with the idea of fattoush because we lost Greg Malouf this week. He has been on my mind, and from there to fattoush was no leap at all.
I’ve known Greg since the early 1990s. From memory, he had just returned to Melbourne from cheffing overseas, when my friends John and Di Dixon – part of a consortium of brilliant film and media types who had just bought a pub in South Melbourne called O’Connell’s – asked Terry and I who they should install as chef. They wanted to do something different from the pub food of the day, something celebratory of Melbourne; a gastropub that put a value on good food and wine.
We said Greg Malouf. He cooked for them, they loved it and he went on to shape that slightly random opportunity into a lifetime of creating wonderful food in Australia and around the world. He will long be remembered for his restaurants but mainly for the wonderful, do-able recipes in the many books he put together with his former wife Lucy, built on his Lebanese background and embracing every cuisine and culture ‘from Mecca to Marrakesh’.
So many of us have family favourites that come out on a random weeknight, or every Christmas Day, that we owe to this warm, funny, gentle chef, and I salute his legacy, both personal and professional. All the very best to his family, and thanks for everything, Greg.
Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry for the kale that inspired this switcheroo.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.
Thank you for a particularly lovely post today. My heritage is Greek Cypriot and I’ve appreciated Greg’s recipes over the years (decades! 😂) because of the similarities to my late mum’s culinary repertoire. I love your fattoush salad recipe and really appreciate your advice about how to prepare kale, which I hope will increase its appeal for my family. They love spinach but are wary of kale and silverbeet, which I’m fond of. I also appreciate your guidance on adding and subtracting ingredients. It’s something we all do when we cook but it’s comforting to know that it’s sanctioned by the recipe’s author.
What a sad loss, Greg joins several great chefs who are now cooking up a storm in Heaven… My sister gave me my first recipe for Fattoush, and all these years later it still sits in the recipe stand, I don’t know why I have never put away in my recipe file. It is an absolutely simple salad, but now you have made it a standout. I really must try that massaging method with Kale, due to it being, as you said, tough and prickly, which surprises me that anyone thought it was a great vegetable to eat in the first place. Thank you for your suggestion re the sausages, you are such a font of information regarding improvisation and ideas that most of us wouldn’t even think about.