I feel a bit brain dead sometimes and need easy, tasty food that serves many purposes and isn't total garbage. Oh so many times how I've succumbed to the "grab n' go" and ended up later with a tummy ache or belly swollen with too much salt or grease. Last weekend I had some veggies to use up and wanted something fast and light but satisfying. So I made fattoush. How to make Fattoush? Well, according to Wikipedia, "To make fattoush, cooks use seasonal produce, mixing different vegetables and herbs according to taste...The vegetables are cut into relatively large pieces..."
Sounds easy enough.
Perhaps you don't eat a lot of Middle-Eastern cuisine and you aren't familiar with fattoush? It's a vegetable-based salad (sans lettuce) that tastes great over couscous (as pictured above) or inside a pita. It's vegetarian, vegan, dairy, and gluten-free (and probably a whole lot of other things too...). After eating some for my lunch, I took the rest of my fattoush to a Sunday afternoon gathering of ladies, each of whom scooped some up with a pita chip as a nice snack.
Fattoush
--1 large cucumber
--1 large heirloom or beefsteak tomato (or 2 romas)
--1 bell pepper
--fresh parsley, cilantro, or mint (I used cilantro)
--TBSP olive oil
--TBSP lemon juice
--dash of salt and pepper
Truthfully, it's just as easy to make as Wikipedia makes it out to be. First you wash and chop up the cucumber and put it in a decent-sized mixing bowl.
Then you remove the seeds from the pepper, chop it up, and add it to the bowl.
Then rinse and repeat with the tomato, chopping it up and adding it to the bowl.
Mince the fresh herbs and add them to the mix. Pour on the olive oil and lemon juice and stir like crazy to mix the whole thing up. Season with a dash of salt and some freshly cracked black pepper to taste. Enjoy!
Dammit Jim, I'm a cook, not a doctor...
Time: 10 minutes
Serves:1 salad
Calories: Under 300 for the whole thing
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