farro fattoush
a good-all-week no-greens salad!!
When I was on GMA on Thursday morning, Robin Roberts asked me if I ever run out of ideas for new recipes to share here on What to Cook. I can honestly say, like I did when she asked, that I don’t! (Also, as an aside for any Robin Roberts fans, she is somehow even more incredible in person than she is on TV. My mom came with me the first time I went on GMA, and Robin always asks how she’s doing, with specific questions from their conversation 🥹.)
I keep a running list of recipe ideas on my phone, and it grows anytime I take a trip, have dinner at a friend’s house, eat out, adjust a recipe for a picky kid and find a magical swap, or read about a recipe in a book.
By the time I left New York on Thursday afternoon, I had tacked twelve(!!) new ideas onto it, and I knew just which one I wanted to tackle first.
Fattoush is a Middle Eastern salad that is full of crisp veg like cucumber and tomatoes. It typically stars crispy fried pita for a nice crunchy grain, and comes dressed in a tart and refreshing dressing (typically made with pomegranate molasses and sumac, which are very worth finding, but I did not use here since a WTC bylaw is being able to find everything at a standard grocery store). My favorite fattoush in the entire world is the fattoush from Oren’s Hummus in Palo Alto, California. The vegetables are finely diced, there are no greens, the dressing is punchy, and the feta is abundant.
My other favorite fattoush is from Shuka in NYC — one of the many restaurants I visited while I was there earlier this week. Their version is a leafy green fattoush with romaine, radicchio, big shards of crisp pita, red onion, lots of parsley, and cucumbers.
I wanted to What to Cook-ify the dish — meaning, I wanted to turn it into a filling complete meal that can come together in under an hour, dirty minimal dishes, and feed a whole family with as little effort as possible. To do that, I swapped the pita out for farro (a fiber-rich whole grain) and added chicken, which we’ll poach (AKA, simmer in liquid) in the same pot as the farro, to make it a complete meal. Cooking chicken and grains in the same pot is a trick I’ll be using a lot going forward!
Our dressing is incredibly punchy thanks to the red wine vinegar, lemon zest, and lemon juice, we’re getting a huge diversity of nutrients from the greens, chicken, and veg, and the protein is on point. I can’t wait for y’all to make this one — healthy can taste so, so good.
We’ve all been loving good-all-week salads, and swapping in farro for the traditional pita chips also allows this salad to stay delicious all week long (the pita chips would get soggy, whereas the farro just gets better as it soaks up the dressing).
If you’re new here, good-all-week salads include vegetables and other elements hearty enough to withstand sitting dressed in the fridge all week. I love this meal for dinner, but also will be meal-prepping it to have easy, nutrient-rich, and delicious lunches in the weeks ahead.
If you’re a big meal-prepper, here are some other good-all-week salads I’ve rolled out in recent months:
within this post, you’ll see a section called “a few more good-all-week salads” with four more ideas!
PS, we also have a guide with tons of tips and ideas for meal prepping.
My grilled chicken pita chop was also inspired by fattoush and, as the name suggests, includes pita, which is the more traditional move. For another Mediterranean salad, try the show off-y Greek salad with perfect grilled chicken! And when you see fresh asparagus pop up at your local farmers market in the coming weeks, grab some to cook crispy farro with sausage and asparagus now that you have farro in the pantry!
Serves 4
Cook time: 30-55 minutes (it will depend what kind of farro you have — see the note about farro beneath the recipe for more info!)
Tools:
Medium (or large) pot
A large serving bowl
Whisk
Colander
Ingredients:
