Greek salad
Bread with butter
Rose cava
The Athens kitchen is suffering from a heat wave. Yesterday was, according to the calendar, the last day of spring. Nevertheless the thermometer hit three digits. It was a good day not to heat up the kitchen.
I found this recipe at Epicurious and followed it pretty closely, with a couple of adaptations and additions based on what we had on hand. The addition of a couple of hard-boiled eggs added a jolt of protein that helped push the salad to the level of "meal" rather than "side." The proportions I give below are what I used last night, which is about half of the recipe you'll find at Epicurious. This was just right for a fairly hearty meal for two.
Mix in a medium bowl:
1 medium tomato, seeded and diced
1/2 large cucumber, seeded and diced (remove the peel, too, unless it's really fresh)
1/2 cup sweet pepper (bell is traditional, but I substituted one banana, from my friend Elizabeth Fuller's garden, and a small poblano from our own)
1/4 cup, or more to taste, diced onions (again, red onions are traditional, but use whatever you have; I used some from our garden that are similar to shallots)
2 radishes, thinly sliced (this is my own addition; we've been getting some beautiful Red Rover radishes from the Athens Farmers Market)
2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped (also a departure from the recipe, but why wouldn't you?)
1-2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar
Fresh oregano and/or mint to taste (I think I used about a tablespoon)
Salt and pepper to taste
At this point you have a mixture that can hang out on the counter for up to two hours, which is very nice if you will be using it as a side dish or taking it to a pot-luck.
When you are ready to serve, add about 1/4 cup crumbled feta, or more to taste. Gently mix the cheese in, then add the entire mixture to a bed of lettuce or other greens (I used mix of local lettuces and sorrel). Add more oil and vinegar to coat the greens.
For the bread, we relied on the folks who get paid to heat up their ovens on hot days, Athens' own Luna Bakery. We like their ciabatta loaves, which are nice and airy and a great vehicle for a good-quality butter.
Except for the butter and the wine, everything originated from within about 50 miles of home.
Warning to all pot-luckers to learn from my mistake: do not add the feta before you have to, especially if you have a lot of tomatoes or something else that produces liquid. The salt will wash out of the feta leaving you with fairly bland feta and a really salty dressing. It probably doesn't matter if you have the feta sprinkled on top and aren't stirring it around. Nevertheless, if we are bringing a Greek salad somewhere, I put the feta in a separate container and keep it in the front seat. You can't be too careful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post! We made this last night without the egg but instead with a pice of roasted salmon with a simple dijon mustard sauce. The salad is so refreshing! I was proud to use a very good jersey tomato I had been saving for a special purpose.
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