“Fattoush” is a traditional Lebanese salad, made of mixed vegetables, bread and special seasoning and since this dish is made out of vegetables it is suitable for people fasting during lent.
My grandfather used to tell me the story of how the Lebanese started to make this salad. In some village in Lebanon, after a group of people finished their food and salad, if they were still hungry and there was remaining dressing in the salad, they would dip bread in the dressing and eat it. Eventually toasted bread found its way into the salad regularly, until finally they added more kinds of vegetables and adjusted the dressing to have what we know today as the traditional Fattoush.
And here is the recipe. I’ve left out the quantities because you can tailor it to your own taste.
Ingredients:
- lettuce
- tomato
- cucumber
- green onion
- radish
- purslane (baqle in arabic)
- parsley
- salt, olive oil, summak, olive oil, frying oil, arabic bread(pita)
Preparation:
- Wash the lettuce, tomatoes and cut them
- Peel the cucumber and cut it in dices
- Peel the radish and slice them
- Cut the green onion in slices
- Peel the leaves of the purslane and wash properly
- Chop few leaves of parsley
- Cut the arabic bread and fry in the oil for few minutes until it becomes light brown color
- Put all the vegetables in a serving bowl and mix together
- Add the salt, summak and the olive oil
- At the end put the fried bread and mix with the vegetables
- You can decorate with few cherry tomatoes if desired.
ET VOILA.. C’EST TOUT.. BON APPETIT
Tabkhet el yom 
I am so glad you posted this. I have sumac in my cupboard. Will have to find purslane somewhere, but I have everything else.
The sumac is indeed important in this salad because it gives it the special taste of fattoush, but if you don’t find the purslane you can replace it with any other kind of green vegetable available.
You might want to check your back yard for the purslane. Lol. I checked at the grocery store for purslane, and I could swear I had heard of it, but nobody there knew what it was. Then as I was gardening, I noticed this new weed and wondered what it was. It looked familiar. A little later, I realized that that new weed was exactly what I was looking for. What a coincidence, huh? Summak (sumac) also grows wild. Make sure you get the red stuff, not the white stuff, as the white stuff is poisonous.
Thank you Tara for stopping by. And yes, the sumac should be the red one, usually we made it at home, it has more flavor then the one found in the market.