Radish fattoush
Photography by Jack Monroe.
A fattoush is traditionally a bread salad, made from toasted or fried pieced of pitta bread, mixed with seasonal vegetables and a sour dressing. The best fattoush I’ve ever eaten was at Palomar in Soho, where it came with generous dollops of creamy home made labneh (yoghurt cheese), which has set off an ‘I-must-learn-how-to-make-labneh’ alarm in my head… In the meantime, here’s my fattoush recipe, that one day I’ll dollop my own home made labneh all over. I’ve substituted that cheese dream for a lightly sour yoghurt dressing instead…
Serves 2:
100g natural yoghurt
50ml oil – sunflower or groundnut
Zest and juice of a lemon or lime
A fat clove of garlic
A generous grinding of black pepper
1 pitta bread, torn into small pieces
6 ripe and juicy tomatoes
Half a cucumber, diced
10 radishes, finely sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
A fistful of mixed salad leaves (peppery flavours like rocket or watercress work well)
A fistful of fresh mint leaves
First, make the dressing. Slowly add the oil to the yoghurt and stir to combine. Squeeze in the lemon juice and grate in half of the zest, grating the other half to leave to one side to garnish. Finely chop and crush the garlic clove into a paste, and stir in. Season to your taste with salt and a generous amount of black pepper, then cover and set to one side.
Tear up the pitta bread and toss into a pan with a splash of oil on a medium-high heat. Cook until crisp, stirring occasionally to stop them from sticking and burning, and to cook them evenly.
Meanwhile, dice the tomatoes, onion and cucumber and slice the radishes, and toss into a bowl with the salad leaves and mint. Scatter the crisp pitta bread croutons over the top, and drizzle the dressing over to serve.
Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agirlcalledjack
Categories: Recipes & Food, VEGETARIAN
Love it! I like my salads to be inventive and this certainly fits the bill and I adore radishes and tend to eat them as I am preparing my salad even though they make me burp lol!!
Labneh couldn’t be easier to make – just line a sieve with cheesecloth, over a mixing bowl, then mix some salt and herbs/spices/zest (any, all or none!) through plain yoghurt, put it into the cheesecloth and tie it off, put a plate and a small weight on top and stick it in the fridge for a couple of days!
labneh here in Mexico is called jocoque and we eat it ALL the time, it’s lebanese and yes, v easy to make. love your recipe, thanks for the idea.
Agree with helenmpeach that labneh is very easy to make, but I’d recommend using full-fat yoghurt (preferably Greek) – and if you add salt, a couple of chopped red chillies and zest from an orange and/or lemon it will fair zing off your tongue.
Please, a labneh recipe – it’s really hard to get here and I love it so much!
A (marginally) quicker way of making labneh is to put the yoghurt in the cheesecloth, tie the ends together and hang it up somewhere witha bowl underneath to catch the whey as it drips out. Leave it overnight/8 hours or so, depending on how firm you want it, then store it in the fridge. The whey can be used in bread etc to give it a slightly tangy flavour.
I’m enjoying the radish fest! Love fatuous and this looks great.
I clicked on this because I liked the name but now I have an urge to go and plant radishes. Thanks for the push to get me off blogs and outside. See you in six weeks!
Just clicked because the name of the recipe was so appealing. Now I feel compelled to go outside and plant things. Thank you!
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