Horiatiki salad

Ingredients

• Ripe tomatoes — in large wedges4
• Cucumber — in thick half-moons1
• Red onion — in thin rings1
• Green pepper1
• Feta — in one piece200 g
• Kalamata olives80 g
• Olive oil60 ml
• Dried oregano1 tsp
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cut the tomatoes into large wedges and salt them straight in the bowl. Leave them five minutes: the juice they give up becomes the base of the dressing.

   5 min

2. 2

   Add the cucumber, pepper and onion. Mix with your hands rather than a spoon — nothing breaks that way.

3. 3

   Scatter the olives over, lay the slab of feta on top and pour the oil over everything at once. Sprinkle the oregano straight onto the feta, where the oil will open it up.

About the dish

Horiatiki has no salad leaves and no vinegar. What gets served as "Greek salad" with lettuce and a lemon dressing has nothing to do with this recipe.

The feta goes on as a single slab rather than crumbled. It keeps its shape in the oil and stays a separate ingredient that everyone breaks up with a fork themselves.

The vegetables are cut large. Fine dicing releases juice and turns the salad to mush; two- or three-centimetre pieces hold their shape to the end of lunch.

Worth knowing

• — The tomatoes decide everything. No amount of oil rescues a winter greenhouse tomato — on those days, cook something else.
• — Onion soaked ten minutes in cold water loses its sharpness but not its flavour. Not a Greek trick, but it works.
• — The oil and tomato juice left at the bottom is mopped up with bread in Greece. It is not an afterthought to the salad, it is part of it.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

320 kcal

Protein

10 g

Fat

27 g

Carbs

11 g

More from Greece

• Moussaka — Aubergine, a meat sauce with cinnamon and a thick layer of béchamel, baked until it sets firm enough to cut.