Tag Archives: Fattoush

Fattoush, watermelon salad, and shakshuka Middle Eastern feast

As you know Thursday night I decided to go all out and make a fabulous Middle Eastern feast with Stav, the Israeli graduate student who has been visiting my lab at Berkeley. You’ve already read about the challah and the dessert that we made for the feast, but here I’m going to tell you about all the food that we made while we waited for the challah to rise and the malabi to set.

Middle Eastern feast of shakshuka, fattoush, and watermelon and feta salad

After finishing up work in the lab on Thursday I took Stav to the Berkeley Bowl to buy ingredients for our feast. This was Stav’s first trip to the Berkeley bowl, which was super exciting for me because you know how much I LOVE Berkeley Bowl. I especially love taking people there for the first time and watching them experience its greatness. If you haven’t been there yet, hit me up and I will take you there. Trust me, you will not be disappointed! It is truly the greatest grocery store that I have ever been to, and no I am not in anyway being paid to say that. Berkeley Bowl has so much amazing produce and especially this time of year with all of the wonderful stone fruit and melons in season, I am easily distracted from my shopping list. Right when we walked in I saw watermelons on sale and I had to have them. I had made this delightful watermelon and feta salad from Yotam Ottolenghi earlier this summer and felt inspired to make it again.

Na’ama’s fattoush and watermelon and feta salad for a perfect light and healthy meal that captures the flavors of summer super well!

If you are short on time and want to make something that is healthy, flavorful, satisfying, perfectly captures the flavors of summer, and involves no cooking whatsoever, make Ottolenghi’s fattoush and watermelon and feta salad. If you haven’t tried mixing sweet juicy watermelon with salty feta and fresh basil for this delicious savory salad, go out and make it right now while it is in season and you still have the chance. I promise you will not regret it!

Watermelon and feta salad with basil and olive oil

The watermelon salad is so simple and easy you don’t even have to measure anything out. Just chop up a watermelon, tear up some basil, thinly slice some red onion, crumble up some feta, and add a dash of olive oil and mix it all together. I swear Ottolenghi is a flavor genius coming up with this stuff. Feta and watermelon is truly a winning combination but adding the basil and the red onion and olive oil is nothing short of magic. You may think I’m being hyperbolic here but really it is such a great fresh summery salad.

Claire enjoying some watermelon while I make the fattoush

After getting side tracked with the unplanned but oh so delicious watermelon salad, I made my favorite fattoush salad from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem which I’ve featured in a previous post. This is another dish that I just can’t get enough of. The fattoush and watermelon salad went together really well and just screamed summer. Our plates were bursting with flavorful fresh herbs, juicy tomatoes and watermelon, and delicious pita with creamy buttermilk. Everything tasted so healthy and light but incredibly satisfying.

Chopped up carrots from my CSA box for the shakshuka

After we made the fattoush and watermelon and feta salad, we got started on the shakshuka, which is an Israeli egg dish with a base of tomatoes and red peppers. Tom and I ate it every morning at the breakfast buffet at our hotel in Israel, but you can also eat it for lunch or dinner. I was intimidated at first to make shakshuka because it sounds so fancy and exotic, but Stav made it seem simple and said that you can pretty much throw any vegetable that you have wilting in your fridge into it. It is the Israeli version of everything but the kitchen sink! stew. Traditional shakshuka starts with a base of tomatoes and red peppers, but you can get creative with it from there. We chopped up onions and garlic sauteed them in oil until soft. We cleaned and chopped up 2 red peppers and a small red chile pepper and added those to the onions and garlic. I had some semi soft carrots in my fridge left over from my CSA basket from the week before so we chopped up those and added them in. I had a can of whole peeeled tomatoes left over from a soup I had made over the weekend, so we cut up those along with 3 fresh tomatoes and added those to the pan. We set the heat on high and let the vegetables cook for 10-15 minutes.

Here’s what it looks like to make a hole in the vegetable sauce and plant a whole egg in it

Once the vegetables were cooked, we added a small can of tomato paste, some cumin, paprika, and some red zhoug which is a spice mixture based on chiles and coriander and garlic that I bought in Israel. You can add any sort of spicy spice at this point- I happened to have zhoug which we added or you could add harissa or if you just have chile flakes that would work too. Let this simmer for another 5-10 minutes and add some salt and pepper. Once the sauce it cooked, make little holes with a spoon and break a whole egg in it. Then put the heat on low and cover and let cook for 10 minutes.

Shakshuka with a tomato, red pepper, chile pepper, and carrot base and eggs simmering

Shakshuka goes great with pita or challah and can also be accompanied by an Israeli cheese called labneh or plain Greek yogurt. It was spicy and savory and the eggs came out perfect. Claire, another one of my graduate student friends, who I went on this awesome trip to the redwoods with, came over to join us for our feast after spending hours washing redwood roots in the lab. The three of us were practically shrieking with delight while eating the fantastic fresh tasting fattoush and watermelon salads which went really well with the shakshuka. The challah that we had baked was delicious dipped into the shakshuka. All in all, it was a successful fun filled evening filled with delicious food and wonderful fungi loving ladies.

Claire looking super stoked to be eating the shakshuka

Fattoush, watermelon salad, and shakshuka Middle Eastern feast

All about Fattoush

As you may have gathered from reading my previous posts, I just love this fattoush :) It’s so good! Even Oprah likes it – see the recipe printed here! It’s one of the first recipes in Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem, and it just makes you feel so healthy and good about yourself eating it! I love all the herbs and fresh ingredients. Each time I’ve made it so far I’ve been switching back and forth between using buttermilk and mixing greek yogurt with milk for the dressing (you have the option of either using 1 and 2/3 cups buttermilk or 1 cup greek yogurt and 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp milk) and I’ve been trying out different pitas. I tried wheat pita today but I think white pita works the best. I also decided to add more tomatoes and radishes this time since I usually have a lot of left over dressing at the bottom after I’ve finished the salad.

Fattoush

The first step is of course getting all the ingredients – you need 2 large naans/pitas/flat bread, the greek yogurt and milk or buttermilk, 3 large tomatoes, 100g radishes, 3 Lebanese cucumbers, 2 green onions, 15g fresh mint, 1 tbsp dried mint, 2 cloves garlic (definitely worth it to invest in a garlic crusher. So glad I bought one at walgreens!), 3 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon (I invested in a lemon squeezer because I’ve realized that yes, fresh squeezed lemon juice is way better), 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar, 1.5 tsp salt, pepper, and sumac to garnish if you have it.

First, I tore up 2 large pitas and put them in this giant salad bowl that I just bought myself at Marshall’s (the best place to buy cheap good quality stuff! Hey, I’m still a grad student after all..)

torn up pita for base of fattoush

Next, I chopped up the tomatoes. I decided to go for 4 tomatoes this time since I just love tomatoes. How pretty are they?

Tomatoes

This is a pretty easy dish to make, you simply slowly add ingredients, layer by layer. Here is the pita with the tomatoes:

Pita and diced tomatoes

Next I chopped the Lebanese cucumbers (also called Persian cucumbers in stores, the small ones):

Lebanese cucumbers

Then I added those to the tomatoes and pita:

Pita, tomatoes, cucumbers

Next I added the radishes. I found some really pretty ones at the Berkeley bowl.

Radishes

Then I sliced up the radishes and added them to the salad bowl:

Sliced radishes

Pita, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes for fattoush

The next ingredient is green onions. There are varying opinions on how high to cut the onion up the green part. I usually cut off the roots and then go about half way up the green part.

green onions

Next I got to add the fresh herbs, which I think are what really make this salad.

Fresh mint for fattoush

Fresh parsley for fattoush

After the herbs, I added two crushed garlic cloves, which is admittedly pretty garlicky. Next time I might add just one. Follow your taste buds on this one! Then add 1 tbsp dried mint, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tbsp white wine/cider vinegar, 1.5 tsp salt, and some pepper. The recipe calls for 3 tbsp lemon juice, and I definitely recommend investing in a squeezer and making it fresh. I bought one recently and I’m very happy with my purchase :)

Lemons to be squeezed for the fattoush

Next toss all the ingredients together and it’s best to let this dish sit for a while and let the flavors meld.

Fattoush

Ingredients

Scant 1 cup Greek yogurt plus 2 Tbsp. whole milk, or 1 cup buttermilk (replacing both yogurt and milk)
2 large stale Turkish flatbread/pita (9 ounces in total)
3 large tomatoes (13 ounces in total), cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 ounces radishes, thinly sliced
3 Lebanese or mini cucumbers (9 ounces in total), peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch dice
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 ounce fresh mint
Scant 1 ounce flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp. dried mint
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
2 Tbsp. cider or white wine vinegar
3/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sumac or more to taste, to garnish

Fattoush, Mejadra, and Swiss Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts

Tonight I returned to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem and prepared the fattoush (pg. 29), mejadra (pg. 120), and swiss chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (p. 88).

My friend came over and was really hungry, so first I made the fattoush and we ate it as an appetizer. The fattoush is quickly becoming one of my favorite dishes from Jerusalem! This was my third time making it – it is one of the simpler dishes to prepare in this book – there are not that many esoteric ingredients and it doesn’t require any cooking – and it is just so good! It is jam packed with herbs and so refreshing.

Fattoush – middle eastern salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, pita, buttermilk, and herbs

After energizing myself with an appetizer of fattoush, I made the yogurt and tahini sauce for the swiss chard dish before starting on the cooked ingredients.

tahini and yogurt sauce for the swiss chard dish

All of the ingredients for the mejadra!

Next I started making the Mejadra, which is a middle eastern dish consisting of basmatic rice, lentils, fried onions, and lots of flavorful spices. This was a little more complicated. It not only required thinly slicing 4 onions, but then I had to fry all of them in oil which I had to do in batches.

4 medium sliced onions with flour and salt – getting ready to fry!

It was a lot of work! I’ve never fried onions before and it was hard to find the balance between making them crispy and brown and not burning them.

frying the onions in sunflower oil

I fried the onions while boiling the lentils. I don’t know why I’ve never made lentils before – they are super simple, cheap, and healthy. After frying all the onions and cooking the lentils, I made the rice.

rice with cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, sugar, allspice, and salt

First I sauteed the cumin and coriander seeds in the pan. I got the seeds from the bulk bins at the Berkeley bowl – so much cheaper that way! It only cost me 6 and 18 cents to buy the spices this way! I can’t believe how much money I’ve been spending on buying non- bulk spices! So then I mixed in a bunch of other spices – cinnamon, sugar, salt, allspice, and turmeric in with the basmatic rice. It smelled so amazing! This dish was definitely a winner.

rice and lentils and spice before adding the fried onions

mejadra with frid onions on top!

At this point I was getting pretty tired but luckily the next dish involved wine as an ingredient, so I opened up the bottle and served myself a glass :) Lauren and I took a bit of a dance break to shimmy around to my itunes shuffle before I started chopping the chard. I definitely need to get a larger pot – this recipe calls for a ton of swiss chard! How beautiful is the swiss chard though?

swiss chard

First I boiled the swiss chard then rinsed and drained it. Then I put butter and oil in the dish and made the hot buttered pine nuts – I’ve never made anything like this before – so absurdly decadent. It smelled so buttery and delicious. Not having a slotted spoon, I used a mixture of a spoon and a slatted spatula to remove the pine nuts from the butter before putting the garlic in the pan. The recipe states to carefully pour in the wine as it may spit – but this was an UNDERSTATEMENT. What followed was nothing short of a wine-splosion! My entire oven and surrounding kitchen were covered in splattered butter/wine mixture and I had to stay away for a while before it simmered down enough for me to turn down the temperature. Yotam is not kidding when he says be careful here!

unfortunately no pictures of the WINEsplosion, but here is the final dish with the hot buttered pine nuts on top

While this was a bit of a hectic evening with so many dishes and the mild explosion, it was totally worth it – these dishes are amazing and go so well together! Something about mediterranean cooking just makes you feel so good – it is rich and filling but contains so many fresh, healthy ingredients and spices that don’t weigh you down. Lauren happily giggled while eating the food and claimed that the kitchen smelled like her grandmother (Lauren’s half Lebanese). Thank you Yotam Ottolenghi for another inspired evening of meals!

Final meal: mejadra, fattoush, and swiss chard with yogurt, tahini, and buttered pine nuts

Lauren super excited to eat our feast!

getting ready to dig in!

fungi foodie

The world is your oyster mushroom!

Tag Archives: Fattoush

Fattoush, watermelon salad, and shakshuka Middle Eastern feast

All about Fattoush

Ingredients

Fattoush, Mejadra, and Swiss Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts