Fabulous Fattoush and homemade pita

Hi everyone! I have not been blogging much recently.  Life has been super busy lately and I have been working a lot. The end of the school year is a bit crazy for teachers as well as for students! I have had some free time and I have been using to cook while blogging has taken a backseat. Cooking has helped me to disconnect from a very stressful time.  I was quite happy when the recipe this week from my cooking group cookthebookfridays was fattoush because it was a salad. Easy peasy, right?  Right! I was not quite sure what fattoush is. I mean, I knew it is a salad but what made it special compared to other salads? So I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Fattoush (Arabic: فتوش, also fattush, fatush, fattoosh, and fattouche) is a Levantine bread salad made from toasted or fried pieces of pita bread (khubz ‘arabi) combined with mixed greens and other vegetables, such as radishes and tomatoes.

There you have it The pita bread and the radishes! YUM! I could not wait to get started. An easy salad sounded perfect!

First,I decided to make my own pita bread. Honestly, this is something that could not be easier and is delicious.

Interested in the recipe? Here it is:

Ingredients:

225 g bread flour

125 g warm water

15 g olive oil

5 g fresh yeast

5 g sugar

5 g salt

*Sunflower oil to grease your work surface

In a bowl, put the oil, warm water, sugar and crumbled fresh yeast. Mix with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add the flour and the salt. Mix. Lightly oil a work surface with sunflower oil and turn the contents of the bowl onto the surface. Scrape the bowl well with a spatula to get all the mixture out,. Knead gently until you have a nice smooth ball. Be patient. It won´t come together in 30 seconds but it won´t take 10 minutes either! Grease a glass or porcelain bowl lightly with olive oil and place the ball inside. Cover with cling film and leave to rise for at least an hour. During that time, it should double in size.

Preheat the oven to 240 degrees. Take the ball out of the bowl and cut it into pieces weighing about 50 grams each. Rolls them into balls. Flatten each of them with a rolling pin until they are about 12 cm in diameter.

Cover a baking tray with parchment paper and arrange the pitas on it. You will have to bake in turns because they won´t all fit onto the tray. (I made 12 pitas) Bake for about 5 minutes or maybe less, depending on your oven. They are ready when they have risen. A few may not rise but don´t worry. They are still wonderful!

And now for the fattoush!

This recipe is from David Lebovitz´s cookbook, My Paris Kitchen . I decided to make this on a Monday and I was very bold in suggesting this as a main meal. My husband was quite surprised but when he saw all the ingredients he was pretty enthusiastic. All that was missing were the radishes. He offered to go to the shop nearby to see if there were any and he came back with some gorgeous ones. I got busy chopping away.

And I cut the pitas into strips after baking them again. (Just had to toast them)

 

And then came the fun part. Mixing all these lovely ingredients together!

Beautiful! And what was the result? WONDERFUL! We loved it and I did not make a mistake in suggesting this as a main meal. It was delicious and filling!  I would make it again and my husband even suggested a lovely glass of pink sparkling wine to go with it. Poor me!  That Monday night was a tough one! hahah!

I did not have any shallots so I used leeks instead. I did not have any sumac, which is a required ingredient. I substituted it with grated lemon rind and a bit of freshly ground pepper.

I am looking forward to seeing how the others reacted to this recipe. If you are interested in making this, check out the recipe here

Have a good weekend everyone!

xxxxNatascha