For more Middle Eastern flavours, try my simple but delicious Falafel Salad Bowl! Food from the Middle East has always been a real treat for me. One of my favourite restaurants is a tiny Lebanese diner on a hidden street. And my favourite food truck sells falafel wraps with grilled halloumi and a spicy chilli sauce. Cuisine from that part of the world stands out because of how brilliantly they combine fresh fruit and vegetables with savoury, smokey ingredients. Food from the region is incredibly diverse, of course, yet is tied together by seasonality and the knowledge of how to make flavour really pop.
Salad bowl
A cooking class, I took recently, inspired me to make this lovely Middle Eastern salad bowl. I deeply enjoyed watching creative and skilled chefs bring so much flavour from fresh, simple ingredients. The class focused on the cuisine from the Middle East so came home and made this salad bringing various elements of those cuisines. And, as usual, I added my own twist. This salad consists of a mix of various greens-baby lettuce, spinach for fresh spring taste and chicory and arugula for a bit of crunch and peppery zest. I also added grilled chicken breast coated in Moroccan spice ras el hanut. I then added sliced avocado, thinly shaved cucumbers and radishes, and segmented blood orange slices. Then the crowning jewel, a good dollop of extra smoky baba ganoush with some unreal dressings!
Middle Eastern salad dressings
Drizzled over is an absolutely out-of-this-world delicious and refreshingly green sauce, zhoug. Zhoug was a new discovery for me. The idea reminded me of a Middle Eastern chimichurri. And like chimichurri, zhoug goes amazingly well with grilled meats and all sorts of vegetables. It has a way of adding freshness to anything it touches, which is quite exciting in a salad bowl like this one. All of this goodness is coated in sweet and tangy pomegranate vinaigrette. The dressing pulls this exciting salad together into with one gorgeous Middle Eastern bowl. If you aren’t familiar with pomegranate molasses, it is a common additive in Middle Eastern cooking. The molasses has a quite concentrated flavour in a potent syrup so a little goes a long way! Because pomegranate molasses is so effective at adding flavour to anything it touches, I try to keep a bottle around my kitchen at all times. One of my favourite uses of it is in Sweet and Sour Meatballs in Pomegranate Sauce!
More Middle Eastern recipes
Easy Flatbread Middle Eastern Salad Bowl with Hummus and Fried Halloumi Roast Chicken with Jerusalem Artichokes and Lemons Middle Eastern Fattoush Salad Turkish Eggs (Çılbır) from The Veg Connection
