Last week, sometime after the third night of repurposed leftover brisket, multiple bowls of matzo ball soup and the umpteenth plate of scrambled eggs, I longed to sink my teeth into some food that would resist.  Give me something — anything! — with some crunch to it. I went to my fridge and pulled out all the raw vegetables I could find: cucumbers, radishes, a lone bulb of fennel. Here was what I had been craving: food that would give my jaw muscles a workout. I chopped up everything I could find, added some grape tomatoes that were sitting on the counter and whipped up a creamy, tangy yogurt dressing to coat the veggies.With every loud bite I was more and more smitten.

The embarrassing truth is that I find green salads to be a little boring. My mother served a green salad with a homemade vinaigrette every night at dinner after the main course. She just felt that a green salad was the proper way to end a meal. It was very European of her. My favorite part of these salads, however, were what my brother and I called “the tidbits,” the vegetables, croutons or other items that Mom added to the lettuce to dress up the salad. If there were no tidbits on a given night, I usually just passed on salad.

What I really want are salads that are all tidbits. Give me an antipasto salad, a chopped vegetable salad, a Cobb salad and I’m a happy woman. Lettuce I could do without. Now don’t get me wrong: I like dark leafy greens. I love to saute them, add them to soups and make pesto from them. I like lettuce on my sandwiches, especially flavorful greens like arugula or spinach. But a green salad just leaves me cold. And viniagrettes? I’m a little over them. I apologize if I shock you.

But a salad like this one with lots of crunch and color and a creamy dressing that coats every bite? This I could eat every day — and I might have to this week because I made such a big batch.  Yes, I was so taken with lat week’s impromptu salad that I made it again this week — only this time writing down what I did so that I could share it with you.

The dressing for this chopped salad is heavily influenced by Jerusalem, 2013’s runaway cookbook hit. I spent most of last year Jerusalem. This year, I don’t cook the recipes quite as much, but my whole style of cooking has changed because of what I learned from that book.

A year ago I didn’t know what sumac was. Now it’s a pantry staple for me. If you aren’t familiar with sumac, I encourage you to seek it out. Few ingredients other than citrus can match it for tartness and it also can add a nice jolt of red color when sprinkled on at the last minute. The addition of flat-leaf parsley to this salad is another lesson learned from Jerusalem. In some ways, this salad is not that far from fattoush or what Israelis call “Israeli salad.” The fennel and radishes add a French note to this otherwise Middle Eastern-inspired dish.

As always, please feel free to treat this recipe as a mere guideline. If radishes aren’t your thing or you despise fennel, don’t tell me about it because I will try to convince you that you are wrong. But go ahead and make the salad with something else. The goal is to create something fresh, crunchy and above all, not boring.