~ Holiday Prep Week: Let's Make Great Lebanese Salata, Habibi! ~

This week, we're focusing on getting ready so the holidays can be calm and joyous--and filled with successful, delicious Lebanese culinary traditions.

Make truly great Lebanese Salads through the holiday season
with a few simple expert tips for your vinaigrettes. Scroll down for my checklist,
so every salad you make comes out feast-worthy!

ACID.

Also known as: vinegar. Vinaigrettes are made with a 3:1 rule of thumb, 3 parts EVOO to 1 part acid. I like my dressings to have a little more tang, so bump that up to 2:1 EVOO to acid.

Great acids for our Lebanese salata: Lemon juice, high-quality vinegars like wine vinegar rice vinegar (unseasoned), or apple cider vinegar.
Pomegranate Molasses and Mulberry Syrup are both acids; they're sweet-tart. I typically also include lemon or vinegar when using either of these in a vinaigrette.
Pomegranate Molasses is the most traditional acid flavor in Fattoush Salad.
Lemon juice is THE Lebanese salata basic, which my mom squeezed on salad every night.
I've grown so fond of rice vinegar that I use at least a dash in most of my vinaigrettes.

Spices.

Spices impart so much flavor. They're an essential building block in the vinaigrette. Mix a pinch into the vinaigrette and then dust another pinch over top of the salad.

For Lebanese salads there is one king of all spices: Dried Mint. Crushed dried mint layers deeper flavor even when you are also using fresh mint or other herbs.
Sumac is also a Lebanese salad favorite. The flavor mimics an acid, tart and bright.
Another spice I do not Salata without is granulated garlic. This is garlic powder, but it is not the white powder variety; it's toasty and has a slightly larger granule than powder. The flavor, like dried mint, ramps everything up even alongside any fresh garlic used in your vinaigrette (which is also very delicious and very Lebanese).

High Quality, Pure Olive Oil.

There's so much to say! Extra Virgin Olive Oil is the heart and soul of Lebanese cuisine and the Mediterranean Diet. It is the only type of oil we use in our salads.

In salads, you may want to use your olive oils that have a little more flavor, more robust or infused oil.

Take care not to over-oil the Salata. My father was the too-much-EVOO police. Olive oil is a must, but too much will wilt the salad and be too heavy.