Fattoush: Fried Bread and Acid-Dressed Salad

Salt the tomato chunks and sliced cucumber lightly and spread them in a colander set over a bowl, so the drawn liquid falls away from the vegetables rather than pooling around them. Leave to drain for at least 20 minutes — the vegetables are ready when the bowl beneath holds a visible pool of liquid. This matters because water still clinging to them would dilute the dressing and turn the fried bread soft before it reaches the table.

Heat the 60 ml of olive oil in a wide frying pan over a medium-high flame, so the bread fries rather than steams and achieves a deep, even colour throughout. Add the flatbread pieces in a single layer and fry, turning once, until deep golden and crisp throughout. Lift onto a rack or paper without stacking, so trapped steam cannot undo the crust you have just built; the bread is done when it sounds hollow when tapped.

Whisk together the sumac, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, and salt until the dressing is uniformly purple-red and the sumac no longer sits on the surface. Taste it now, before it meets the vegetables, so you can judge its true strength — it should be assertively sour and boldly seasoned, because it will mellow once it contacts the bread and vegetables and you cannot correct it afterwards. Err toward boldness.

Pat the drained tomatoes and cucumber dry, then combine them in a wide bowl with the radishes, spring onions, and purslane or lettuce; pour over the dressing and turn to coat. This is where the dish lives or dies: add the fried bread pieces only at the last possible moment before the salad goes to the table, because too early and the bread becomes irretrievably soggy, too late and it is unpleasantly hard. The correct window is when the bread retains a slight crispness at its centre but has begun to soften at the edges where it contacts the dressing.