I'm falling for fattoush, my peasant-style bread salad.

Announcer: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Middle Eastern music playing] If tabouli is the queen salad throughout the land of Lebanon and the Middle East, then fattoush would be the princess.

Belonging to the family of dishes known as fatteh, meaning to use day-old bread as a base, this Lebanese peasant-style bread salad is anything but peasant-tasting, and is full of sudden surprises.

This festive salad is an exhilarating taste of fresh and flavorful vegetables and herbs that meet a medley of mixed greens coated in a lemony and garlicky vinaigrette that is seasoned with tangy sumac spice, then tossed together with my crispy and crunchy, toasted-to-perfection pita bread pieces that is sure to become your new favorite salad.

Fattoush.

It's a waterfall of freshness.

I gathered all of my glorious goodies today from Mama's garden, and "garden" we call [speaks Arabic word] in Arabic, for one of my favorite salads, and I know it's gonna become one of your favorite salads, too, and it's called fattoush.

I love just saying that word with my hands sort of open wide.

Ha ha!

And the word "fattoush" literally means to crush, or little bread crumbs, actually, referring to the toasted and crispy and crunchy pita bread pieces that sort of get topped all over this fresh-from-the-garden salad.

And the first thing that we're gonna get started on to make our fattoush salad is, of course, our bread.

Fattoush is actually part of the fatteh family, and actually, all the dishes that we're making today are part of the fatteh family, meaning to use leftover bread as a base.

So we're just gonna drizzle a little bit of olive oil.

I have 3 pita loaves because I want lots of crunchy, crispy pita bread pieces.

Ha ha!

So now I'm gonna grab my sea salt and I'm going to make sure to season this well.

OK.

So I'm gonna grab our sumac spice, because I'm going to enhance the sumac flavor, and this is actually the signature spice in the fattoush salad.

So I thought it would be nice to sprinkle some of the sumac spice all over our pita bread loaves, too.

All right, and now we're gonna get the bread in my oven.

You can fry the pita bread as well, but you know me-- fresh is best.

So I'm going to basically bake it until it's nice and crispy and crunchy on both sides at about 425 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes.

I'm gonna flip them over halfway through.

So now while they are baking away, we're gonna get started on making our fabulous fattoush salad, and I have all of these delicious and fresh sort of effervescent ingredients right before me.

OK, so, I'm actually gonna start with our romaine lettuce.

That's the typical sort of traditional choice of lettuce that we use when we're making our fattoush.

I'm just gonna slice off the end just like that.

And I like to run my knife through the center of the romaine heart and then sort of roughly chop each half.

It's very much like a festive salad that brings all of the family and friends around to the table.

I love this salad so much because we have so many different type of fresh vegetables and herbs going in it, and we're gonna start off with layering our Persian cucumbers, and they are for sure my cucumber of choice.

You can see that they're smaller and they're sort of lighter green in color.

They have a thin skin and they have really tiny seeds so you don't have to seed them at all for this recipe or for any of the recipes where I use a Persian cucumber, which is pretty much all the time.

Ha ha!

All right, I'm just gonna slice off the little ends just like that, just slice them down the center, and then I'm gonna run my knife across to do these, like, half-moon shapes, just like that.

OK, beautiful.

Our radishes are nice and sliced, and I just love that white and that sort of pinkish-red color, and now we're gonna grab ourselves some beautiful bell peppers.

I like to use a variety of colors for the salad, again, part for presentation and part for taste, so I have a nice, beautiful yellow.

I have an orange and some little sort of baby orange ones, too, because they're so cute.

Ha ha!

They're nice and tender and tasty, too.

And a beautiful red bell pepper.

OK, so now we're gonna take our scallions, our spring onions, and we're gonna just trim off the end stems just like that.

Then we're gonna take half of them at a time, and I also like to slice these on the bias, on that angle, just like we did with the Persian cucumbers.

Beautiful.

OK, so now for some-- let's go for our chives next.

What do you think?

These look beautiful.

Just gonna take myself a nice, big bunch.

You definitely want to be abundant with the herbs, because they're gonna add a lot of flavor to our fattoush salad today.

Wonderful.

I'm feeling the freshness.

It smells absolutely amazing in this kitchen today.

OK, so now we're gonna grab a nice, big bunch of our na'na, our fresh mint, and again, it's spearmint.

I get asked that question all the time, what type of mint I use, and it's spearmint.

Not peppermint.

OK, so now we need some fresh flat-leaf parsley, also known as Italian parsley.

I'm gonna grab myself a nice, small bunch of this as well.

Wonderful.

And now for one more final herb that we have, some fresh thyme.

I'm just gonna take a couple of sprigs and just run my fingers right down the little stem just to release those little, tiny, fragrant leaves.

Super easy to do.

I'm doing it right over the bowl, also.

Now we're gonna get two tomatoes.

You want to pick some nice, vine-ripe ruby red tomatoes just like this that are nice and juicy, but still firm.

You don't want them too mushy.

So I'm gonna take about 3, because I also have these beautiful red and yellow cherry pear tomatoes, and we're gonna put those on top, too.

This salad is looking stunning.

I don't know about you guys, but I am feeling very inspired by this salad right now and I think that it's gonna definitely impress when you make this at home.

OK, so for one last special ingredient-- I saved it to the last because it is very special-- is our watercress.

So typically in a fattoush salad, you would add sort of bakleh, we call it, which is purslane in American, or watercress, or you could also use arugula.

So I found this beautiful watercress, and I'm just going to sort of release the small, little leaves, and we're just gonna sprinkle some of these tender, pleasantly bitter, somewhat sweet leaves right on top of our beautiful fattoush bowl.

And the next thing that we are gonna be making is our vivacious vinaigrette to coat our fattoush salad with our toasted bread.

I have started to make our vivacious vinaigrette.

It's a garlicky, lemony, sort of vinegary fresh herb dressing for our fattoush salad, and I started off with one whole head of garlic, and the reason why I have one whole head of garlic is because look at this big bowl of fattoush before me.

Ha ha!

So if you're making a smaller-size fattoush salad, then you can use about 4 cloves, 4 to 6 cloves of garlic, I would say.

So don't be shy with the garlic, though, because it really makes the dressing absolutely delicious.

OK, so we're gonna just sort of take a whisk and start to stream some of this olive oil.

And now I'm gonna drizzle in some red wine vinegar.

OK, that looks great.

And now we are going to season with some sea salt and some freshly ground pepper, about a teaspoon of each, and also some sumac spice.

And this was a spice that also went on our pita bread loaves that are hanging out right over here-- ha ha!--until we toss our salad.

About a teaspoon or so.

You want to really be generous with this spice because it is one of the main ingredients in our fattoush salad.

It's looking and smelling good already.

Love it.

And now for our fresh herbs.

We're sort of gonna mimic the fresh herbs that were in our fattoush salad.

So I have some beautiful, fresh, flat-leaf parsley, also known as Italian parsley.

And now for some fresh na'na, our spearmint.

And last but not least is some fresh thyme leaves, and now certainly not least is our fresh lemon juice.

Got to have lemon juice, right, when you're making salad dressings?

OK, now we're just gonna whisk this all together just like so.

Wow.

You see how beautiful that is, right?

Let's give it a taste.

Mmm.

That is absolutely sensational.

So what we are going to make next is another fabulous fatteh dish.

It's part of the fatteh family to use leftover pita bread, and that is called our fatteh hummus.

So I have started our second dish of the day for our fatteh family, meaning to use leftover pita bread, and we're making a dish by the same name called fatteh hummus.

And what it is, it's this luscious Lebanese layered dip, if you will.

It's actually eaten most frequently in the breakfast time and also at brunch time.

OK, so I've started with our pita bread that I've basically sliced into, like, a pie, and now I have these wonderful triangular slices just like so, and I'm gonna grab--I have two sheet pans, because we're gonna use lots of toasted pita, actually chips that we're making today.

I call them my crispy, crunchy crisps.

And what I like to do, which I think makes for really perfect pita chips, is I like to sort of separate the loaves and the triangle pieces just like so, and I'm just gonna drizzle some olive oil and also a little bit of sea salt.

And I'm gonna add a special touch of some sesame seeds.

OK, so now we're gonna get these in our oven.

I have it preheated at 350 degrees, and they're gonna bake for about 12, 15 minutes tops until they're nice and crispy and crunchy for our fatteh hummus.

So it's fatteh hummus, which means the chick peas, the hummus, is our main part of this layered dip.

So I started off with dried chick peas that I soaked overnight in some cold water, and then I started to cook them the next day, and now they are completely nice and cooked for us, and we're gonna sort of mash them up a little bit and also leave some whole.

They're mashing up beautifully and as you're going along, if you see some skins, pick those off, too.

Then we're gonna add some garlic paste that I have over here.

It's about one tablespoon.

We want it to be nice and flavorful.

And we are also going to take some fresh mint and we're gonna finely chop this up and we're gonna add that to the bowl as well.

And we're also going to add in some olive oil.

Just a couple tablespoons or so.

And also some fresh lemon juice.

It looks so good already and we've only just begun.

And now we just need to add a little bit of sea salt so we can season our chick peas.

And now we're just gonna sort of blend this mixture together.

Doesn't it look delicious?

I'm gonna taste it.

I want to make sure that it is seasoned correctly.

We're gonna taste each layer as we go.

Mm.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh.

This is incredible.

The flavor just sort of explodes right in your mouth.

The warm chick peas are absolutely delicious.

They're so soft and moist, and I love the garlic and the mint combination with the olive oil and the lemon and the sea salt.

OK, so now it's our third layer.

The first layer is gonna be our pita chips, our sesame seed pita chips, actually.

They're gonna layer the bottom of our casserole pan.

The second layer is gonna be our warmed chick peas that we just made, and our third layer is gonna be our labneh, our homemade Lebanese yogurt, and tahini sauce.

So we're gonna start by making this.

I have two cups of labneh.

And this is unstrained yogurt.

OK, so now we are going to take our tahini, which is our sesame seed paste, and we're just gonna pour that right in just like that.

We're gonna whisk these two liquids together so they become one.

Look at that.

It's beautiful, right?

OK, so now we're also gonna add a little bit of our garlic paste, another tablespoon that was left over in our [speaks Arabic word], our mortar and pestle.

Then we're gonna whisk this in.

And one more ingredient-- we're gonna grab a little bit more of our fresh na'na, our fresh mint, and we're gonna whisk this just like that.

All right, so I'm just gonna get my heat onto low and we are going to pour in our labneh tahini sauce.

We're gonna keep our whisk on hand here, because whenever you're warming labneh yogurt, you want to make sure to keep your whisk running through the yogurt so that it doesn't curdle.

And we're not really bringing it to a boil at all, or a simmer, for that matter.

We're just warming it through, because this is a warm sort of beautiful breakfast bowl that is eaten traditionally like this in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East for breakfast.

It's actually one of my Uncle Dominic's favorite dishes to eat for breakfast.

When he's in Lebanon, he visits my sitto, my grandmother, who is in northern Lebanon, and he visits this little restaurant of his every morning and orders a nice, big, warm bowl of fatteh hummus, so, this one is for my uncle Dominic and for all of you out there who love fatteh hummus, too.

All right, so now I'm just gonna shut this off, because it is where I want it and I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead.

Ha ha!

And I've also taken out our beautiful homemade pita crunchy crisps.

I seasoned those with a little bit of olive oil, sea salt, and sesame seeds, and now it's time for the fun part of making our warm, comforting, casserole breakfast bowl that we traditionally enjoy at breakfast time in Lebanon.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna layer the pita chips on the bottom of a deep-dish casserole pan just like this.

OK, just like that, and we are gonna take our chick peas, our warm chick peas that were partially mashed and partially whole.

We added in olive oil.

We added in fresh lemon juice.

We added in garlic and we added in some mint.

And we're just gonna layer those right on top.

And now we are going to take our labneh and tahini sauce.

OK, so now we are going to take some reserved whole chick peas and we're gonna sprinkle these on top just like that.

Beautiful.

Looking good.

And now we are going to add a really flavorful finishing topping with some toasted pine nuts over our layered chick pea... [Sizzling] pan.

Ha ha ha!

Hear that sizzle, sizzle just hitting all those other ingredients.

Isn't that amazing?

Beautiful.

OK.

So just a couple more finishing touches.

We are going to add a little finishing touch of some paprika.

I'm using the traditional paprika or sweet paprika.

You could also use smoky, too, if you like.

And just one more touch of some fresh parsley, just finely chop this.

Wonderful.

And now we're gonna take our other pita chips, because remember, we did two pans.

Just arrange them going around the casserole pan.

OK, so there you have it.

There is our fatteh hummus.

It's our luscious Lebanese layered dip, and we are going to have this join our fattoush that's been on standby.

We're gonna toss everything together and taste them.

It's the finale of our fatteh day with our flavorful fattoush, our big bowl of salad that we have created, and our fatteh hummus that's just sitting there and calling my name that we just made, and now for the finale of our fattoush, I'm gonna break--ha ha ha!-- our toasted pita bread loaves.

So fun to do, right?

You can just sort of rustically sort of break up the loaves just like that.

Lovely.

And we're gonna sprinkle some of our sumac spice.

A little bit of sumac spice is a really nice touch before we add our vivacious vinaigrette dressing that we made as well.

And we layered everything, so I'm just actually gonna take a little section here, and that way it'll have everything that we layered on top of one another, and I'm also going to scoop up myself some of our fatteh hummus.

I'm going to actually grab a couple of our homemade pita chips that were drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and sesame seeds, which I just love.

Look at this luscious layered dip.

OK.

I must say that fattoush is my favorite, but I'm gonna have to go for a bite of the--ha ha!-- fatteh hummus first.

Mmm.

Wow.

and that's the wayt's nice , that you want to enjoy this dish.

It's got so much flavor going on with those warm chick peas.

The sauce, the yogurt, and tahini sauce is warm, too.

And I love the crunch of the pita chips and those pine nuts.

Mmm.

Just delicious.

It's a really fun dish to share with family and friends at breakfast time and at brunch.

Or really any time of the day, because you can make this for lunch, dinner, late night snack, you name it.

Fatteh hummus is your dish that you guys are gonna just love.

And now for my fattoush salad.

I'm gonna get myself my Persian cucumber and a radish, because I love radishes so much.

And a little bit of the romaine lettuce with my watercress and all of those fresh herbs.

Mmm.

Delicious.

Take a little bite of the toasted pita bread with the sumac spice.

Mmm.

There's so much flavor going on.

I love all of the textures and the colors.

Such an amazing way to use leftover pita bread, and I'm so happy that our culture, our Lebanese and Middle Eastern culture, is founded on these types of fatteh dishes, and I'm so happy that I could share them all with you today.

I wish for you to make them with your family and friends, too, and until we cook again, I always wish you and yours to takloull bil' hanna-- eat in happiness-- and sending smiles.

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Julie: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Middle Eastern music playing]