The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 03, The Pestle, the Pantry and the Mezze Table
Fatteh
Damascus
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- 8 sources cited
Fatteh layers toasted bread, warm chickpeas and a garlic and tahini yoghurt, finished with warmed samna. In Damascus it is a breakfast.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 30 minutes, plus time to cook the chickpeas if not using ready-cooked.
Ingredients
- 3 loaves of flatbread, about 100g each, stale, cut into squares and toasted
- 400g cooked chickpeas, warm
- 500g full-fat yoghurt
- ½ lemon, juiced
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 60ml tahini
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tbsp samna (clarified butter)
- optional pine nuts, toasted, to scatter
Method
- Toast the squares of bread at 170°C until crisp and golden.
- Whisk the yoghurt with the tahini, lemon juice, cumin, salt and garlic into a sauce, kept apart from the chickpeas until assembly.
- Layer the toasted bread in a serving dish, top with the warm chickpeas, and pour the seasoned yoghurt over just before serving.
- Finish with the samna, warmed until fragrant, drizzled over the top, and a scatter of toasted pine nuts if available.
Notes
The sauce follows a Damascene home recipe; the amount of bread follows Dimah's family recipe on her blog Orange Blossom Water.
What a modern chef changes
The temperature contrast between layers treated as the point of the dish
No numbered rung; a plating and timing discipline specific to fatteh's structure
Method
- Keep the bread, the chickpeas and the yoghurt genuinely separate until the very last moment, since the dish's whole appeal depends on a contrast, crisp cold bread, warm chickpeas, cool yoghurt, that collapses within minutes of assembly.
- Warm the samna until it is properly fragrant, not merely melted, since this is the dish's finishing note and a cold or under-warmed samna does noticeably less work.
- Serve immediately in the dish it was assembled in, rather than plating individual portions in advance, so each diner gets the layered contrast as intended.