purslane: a summer weed/super food makes a zingy lebanese salad—salatat baqle

purslane, an international common weed originating in India, known in Arabic as baqle, contains more Omega-3 fatty acids (α-linolenic acid) than any other leafy vegetable plant. 100 grams of fresh purslane leaves provides about 350 mg of α-linolenic acid. as many health-conscious folks know, omega-3's are antioxidants.

it is also an excellent source of Vitamin A, (1320 IU/100 g, providing 44% of RDA) and one of the highest among green leafy vegetables. Vitamin A is a known powerful natural antioxidant.

but beyond health benefits, today i found enough baqle to make the purslane salad recipe from alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking on p. 70, and it was so good, i ate the whole bowl! i found the weed in beds planted with other veggies, on pathways, under a summer squash plant; this year it's really thriving.

what i love so much is that it just shows up in the garden on it's own like clockwork, in the middle of summer...august 15, full moon and all.

wash and drain it along with italian parsley and spearmint, the thick stems removed, 

and then chopped along with fresh tomatoes if you have them. mine aren't ripe yet, so i used some canned ready-cut organic tomatoes that i use until my garden tomatoes ripen. the dressing is, if you read this blog you'll have guessed, garlic mashed with sea salt, lemon juice, and olive oil!

simple to prepare...a perfect summer lunch with baba ghannouj, garden cukes, and some gluten free rice crackers for dipping. 

bon appetite!

please add a comment letting us know if you have found purslane (baqle) in your garden and what city and country you're in! it will be fun to see the responses! of course let us know if you make this perfect summer salad!

fattoush—the "other" favorite authentic lebanese salad

although tabbouli is probably my favorite lebanese salad and is so popular and well known, not to mention super nutritious, fattoush is a close second. mama said this arabic word comes from the arabic word "fatte" meaning "broken up" or "pieces", which in this salad refers to the broken pieces of arabic bread that are crisped and added to the salad just before tossing.

it had been too long since i made fattoush, so i made it for a small dinner party recently and it was so fabulous that i keep making it. it's much easier to make than tabbouli, which i often crave at this spring time of year, when the parsley and mint in my garden are thriving in oregon rain. both salads include these two herbs along with green onions and a dressing of fresh squeezed lemons and olive oil. no garlic! recipes for both are in alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking, of course!

the ingredients for alice's fattoush are: romaine lettuce, cucumbers, green onion, parsley, spearmint, sumac (optional), purslane (when it's available in the summer garden...it just shows up as a weed! and known by latinos as verdolaga), tomatoes, and toasted arabic bread.

the reddish-brown sprinkling on the bread is ground sumac berries that give the fattoush a zesty tart flavor. often used instead of lemon juice, sumac is typically used in fattoush especially to marinate onions, removing the sharp edge of raw onion.

using leftover, dry bread in pieces is the arabic version of adding croutons to a salad. you can see i've used a very flat bread instead of thicker pita bread, which would be fine, but i prefer the thinner bread: khoobz markouk or an armenian lavosh. the bread is toasted lightly to crisp it up and is added to the salad just before dressing and tossing, as it will get soggy if it sits too long, so timing is everything in this recipe. sorry the photo is fuzzy! i was in a big hurry to take blog photos as my little dinner party was just about to begin. thanks to my dear friend, pam, who took a couple of photos and made the fantastic deviled eggs, here's the table without the main entreé of lebanese broiled chicken over rice:

marinated broiled chicken served over brown rice, topped with sauteéd nuts—a mixture of slivered almonds, pine nuts, and pistachio nuts—then sprinkled with cinnamon, and served with a dish of homemade lebanese aioli (garlic mayonnaise—toum ou zeit) is a classic lebanese favorite from alice's kitchen.

the salad before adding the broken arabic bread using canned organic diced tomatoes...

...instead of out-of-season tomatoes trucked north from south of the border is a new discovery that has been surprisingly delicious and is more sustainable. what convinced me most about using canned organic tomatoes is that they are picked when they're sun-vine-ripened, so they're very sweet and tasty. 

this dinner included the colorful beet salad and hommus featured in a recent blog post. watch for an upcoming blog enty about making the garlic mayonnaise, which is divine and a little tricky, but sooooo worth it!

a follow up note about my fava beans planted in february: they're blooming beautifully! will add a photo soon! 

happy cooking and sahtein!