Fattoush salad with grilled halloumi recipe

Take your salad game to the next level with our Middle-Eastern style Fattoush, featuring crispy pitta croutons and grilled halloumi.

Fattoush salad is a traditional Levantine salad made from greens and other chopped vegetables tossed with pieces of fried or toasted flatbread. Our version uses toasted pitta breads and is topped with delicious griddled halloumi.

This dish makes a great main course. It’s tasty and really filling. It’s also packed with vegetables (four portions per serving) and a wide variety of nutrients. It’s one of our favourite salads and it’s gone down a treat with all our testers.

It’s also quick and easy to make, on the table in around 30 minutes.

Our version is vegetarian friendly, providing you buy vegetarian halloumi. If you want to make it vegan, just take out the cheese – perhaps replacing it with a plant-based alternative such as tofu or vegan cheese.

The best bit about this salad is really the sumac. Sumac is a dried spice that adds a fantastic tangy, almost citrussy flavour to the salad, which works beautifully with the lemon juice and olive oil in the dressing.

Don’t be tempted to leave out this ingredient because it really takes the dish to the next level. It’s easy to find – you can buy it in most supermarkets.

We hope you love this recipe as much as we do!

How to make this Fattoush salad with halloumi

The first thing to do is make your pitta crisps. Roughly tear the two pitta breads into pieces, about the size of a tortilla chip.

Lay these out on a baking tray and drizzle over a tablespoon of olive oil. Then sprinkle over a teaspoon of sumac, a pinch of salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.

Pop these on the middle shelf of a preheated oven for 5 minutes or so. You want them to be crispy but not brittle. A good tip is to take them out when they look slightly underdone, because they’ll continue to crisp up slightly after you remove them from the oven.

Meanwhile, prep your salad. Shred your lettuce, slice and quarter your cucumber and slice your radishes (very thinly). If you don’t like radishes, quarter and thinly slice a red onion instead.

Next, tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes are key here; ripeness matters more than size or type. So, we use plum, but you could use cherry or beef if you prefer. Just chop them into bitesize pieces. If you’re a big tomato fan, you could chop a handful of sundried tomatoes and add these to the mix, too.

The dressing is what really makes the salad, and it’s super simple to make yet so much better than any store bought variety.

To make it, you mix together extra virgin olive oil, sumac and the juice of one lemon, and season with salt and pepper. Then add some torn fresh mint leaves and mix well. (Don’t have fresh mint? Use a teaspoon of dried mint. Don’t like mint? Fresh parsley leaves work well too.)

Pour this over the salad and toss well. You want every vegetable to get a little coating of the amazing sumac and lemon dressing.

Now you have your salad dressed, it’s time to grill the halloumi. Turn the heat up high so your griddle pain is nice and hot and grill the cheese for 1-2 minutes on each side. You want nice griddle marks, but be careful not to burn it.

All that’s left now is to assemble your meal. Divide the dressed salad between four plates, add the pitta chips and top with the halloumi.

If you want an extra kick of flavour, squeeze a dollop of sweet chilli sauce or pomegranate molasses over your halloumi to finish.

Fattoush salad with grilled halloumi

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

2 wholemeal pita breads

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp sumac

350g plum tomatoes, halved

200g radishes, very thinly sliced

1 cucumber, sliced and quartered

2 little gems or 1 romaine lettuce, shredded

250g halloumi, cut into 8 thick slices

For the dressing:

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp sumac

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt and pepper

1 small handful fresh mint leaves, roughly torn

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200 °C / 180 °C fan. Tear the pittas into pieces roughly the size of a tortilla chip and place on a large baking tray. You want them in one layer only.

2. Drizzle 1 tbsp oil and sprinkle 1tsp sumac over the pittas. Season with salt and pepper and bake for 5 minutes, or until crisp.

3. In a small bowl or ramekin, combine the ingredients for the dressing, stirring well.

4. In a large bowl, combine the tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, and lettuce and toss. Pour over the dressing and toss again, making sure all the salad gets a good coating.

5. Heat a griddle pan over a high heat and grill the halloumi until browned – about 2 minutes on each side.

6. Divide the salad between four plates, scatter over the grilled pittas, top with the halloumi and dig in!