Middle Eastern Salad

This is my go-to salad to serve alongside any Middle Eastern dish, such as lentil soup, curries and stews, or even just on its own. If you’re lazy to go out and dine at your favourite lebanese or syrian restaurant, this salad with a few of your other favourite dishes will not disappoint you.

I will be traditionally flavouring the salad with sumac, which is a Middle Eastern spice made from the berries of the sumac bush. This spice has a tart flavour so we’ll be adding lemon juice and za’atar to cut through. It’s worth hunting down for sumac to make this dish if you can. But the salad is equally delicious even if you can’t find it because the za’tar can make up for it.

For the dressing, a high-quality gourmet salt can really make this salad a whole lot better so I will be using himalayan salt but sea salt works just fine.

 

Serves 6 people

Ingredients: 

1 iceberg lettuce

1 cup parsley

1 cup mint

3 cups spinach

1 cup rocket

1/2 cup radish

2 large tomatoes

1 spring onion

1/4 cup green pitted olives

 

Dressing : 

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

3 tbsp sumac

1 tsp black pepper

1 tbsp za’atar

1 tsp himalayan salt

 

Method: 

Finely chop up the parsley and mint together, place in a big bowl and mix. Then finely chop the lettuce, spinach, rocket, and onion. Dice the tomatoes and roughly chop the radish and place into the bowl along with the pitted olives.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and pour over the salad. Mix together thoroughly so all the salad is coated with the dressing. Serve and enjoy!