Fattoush.....a Lebanese salad

Fattoush is a Lebanese salad where the pita chips are fried or roasted and mixed with other vegetables and is seasoned with sumac(a middle eastern spice) mixed in olive oil with other ingredients.Though in this salad I did not use pita chips and sumac,I used fried bread croutons instead of pita chips as I did not have them in hand when I prepared it.I have adapted this recipe from Sanjeev kapoor's 'Salad's' book where his version is exactly the way I mentioned down where you can convert into complete lebanese salad by just replacing bread croutons with fried pita chips and sumac.It was really colorful, refreshing and hearty salad and goes well in any kind of party or usual dinners.This salad is going to participate in 'Show me your salad' event hosted by Divya of Dil-se.

Ingredients:
1 medium green Capsicum,seeded and cut into 1" cubes
1 medium tomato,seeded and cut into 1" cubes
1 medium cucumber,cut into 1" cubes
1 medium onion,cut into 1" cubes
3 bread slices,cut into 1" cubes
1 small head of iceberg lettuce
5-6 black olives,whole or thinly sliced
5-6 green olives,stoned and sliced
1-2 sprigs fresh parsley
2 tbsp Olive oil
1 tsp vinegar

For Dressing:
3 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp Vinegar
1 tbsp Lemon juice
salt to taste
1/2 tsp black pepper crushed
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp dried mint or fresh mint

Method:

• Heat olive oil in a wide pan and add bread cubes and saute over medium heat to make golden croutons.
• Prepare dressing by mixing everything mentioned under the ingredients for dressing and keep it aside.
• Soak chopped onions in 1 tsp vinegar for 1/2 hr.
• Tear the iceberg lettuce roughly and place in a large bowl.Add all the vegetables,green and black olives.
• Squeeze the onions soaked in vinegar and add to the bowl of vegetables.
• Tear the parsley roughly and add to the bowl,toss well and mix.
• Just before serving pour the dressing all over,add fried bread croutons and toss again.

Serve immediately.

Variations to Fattoush:

• You can even add red and yellow bell peppers along with green capsicum to the above salad.
• You can replace fried bread croutons with roughly torn and fried pita bread to the salad.
• If you do not have parsley,you can replace parsley by coriander which adds its own unique flavor to the salad.
• As I mentioned the original fattoush uses sumac as a spice,but if you do not have that for different flavors you can even add 1/2 tsp grated garlic or 1 tsp dijon mustard to the dressing which converts the salad very very flavorful.