My first hospitality job was at the Bottle Inn in Marshwood, Dorset, in 1997. On my first shift waiting tables, I spilled gravy down a poor customer’s dress, and it was quickly agreed that it might be best if I work in the kitchen. I’ve never looked back.
It was there that I met my friend and mentor Ben “Pig” (named after the pigs he kept in his garden). Ben previously worked at the River Cafe with his brother Jake Hodges, who went on to open Moro in London with Sam and Sam Clark. Ben and Jake’s parents lived in the south of Spain, and the heavy Moorish influence on the region’s cuisine became my foundation in cooking.
Ben and I travelled the length of Spain more than once, sourcing produce and discovering new recipes to serve up when we returned to the UK. We’d enjoy plates of spiced snails, morcilla (Spanish blood sausage), piquillo peppers and today’s salad made with stale flatbread and sumac, which is almost as popular in southern Spain as it is in north Africa.
Fattoush
Fattoush is an Arabic dish that’s very similar to the Italian panzanella. Both use stale bread and are delightfully simple. This recipe is versatile and can change with the season: in autumn and winter, try exchanging the tomatoes for cubes of cooked beetroot, the cucumber for pieces of celery, and the red pepper for sliced red chicory leaves. The grilled stale flatbread, meanwhile, is delicious in its own right, especially when doused with oil and seasoned with salt and sumac. Eat it like chips and use to scoop up various dips from baba ganoush to hummus.
Tomatoes can either taste of nothing or be the most flavoursome, savoury-sweet rounded of flavours, so pick well. Buy in season and make sure they are ripe; better still, grow your own in pots, if you can. A mix of varieties will give you a wonderful diversity of sweetness and colour.
Serves 4
1 large stale pitta or flatbread
Extra-virgin olive oil, to taste
Salt and black pepper
1 pinch sumac
150g tomatoes, cut into rough 3cm cubes
1 red pepper, pith and seeds discarded, flesh cut into strips
100g cucumber, cut into rough 3cm cubes
½ small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 small handful each mint, parsley and basil, leaves picked and roughly chopped, stalks finely chopped
1 small lemon, juiced
Put the stale bread on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Grill or bake for three to five minutes, until it goes crisp, then cut into rough 3-5cm pieces, put in a bowl and season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sumac.
In a large bowl, combine thetomatoes, red pepper, cucumberand red onion, then add the herbs and toss to mix.
Add the crisp flatbread to the salad, season and dress with olive oil and lemon juice to taste. Eat immediately, or leave to sit and macerate for 15 minutes, so the flavours mingle and the bread softens slightly.
