Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Greek Salad (Serves 2)

















This salad happened by chance. I was at the local grocery store on Sunday buying vegetables for the next couple of weeks and was looking for ricotta cheese. I ended up picking a box of feta cheese thinking it was indeed ricotta cheese that I was picking up. Here comes old age.

My wife called me when she left work and asked me what's for dinner. Since we wanted to prepare something real quick, I offered salad and that too Greek salad as a choice. We already had most of the ingredients, some whole wheat pita and hey, feta cheese as well. How perfect! :-) So it was decided. I picked up some oil cured black olives from the market at the Grand Central terminal in NYC.

I put together the salad rather quickly after referring to a couple of books and then deciding to go my own way. My lovely wife Anita meanwhile grilled some tofu Indian style and toasted the pita bread. A few camera clicks later, we were devouring the salad away and wiped the whole salad bowl clean. Well, almost. Okay now to the fun part.

2 endives
2 kirby cucumbers
1/2 large red onion
2 medium plum tomatoes
3 scallions
1 cup crumbled fresh feta cheese
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh parsley leaves
6 tbsp good quality extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped oil cured black olives
1 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
2 1/2 tbsp lemon juice

Clean and chop all the vegetables into similar medium size pieces. Add the feta cheese, olives, and parsley leaves. In a small bowl, whisk together the extra virgin olive oil, ground pepper, lemon juice and salt (be careful with the salt since the feta cheese and olives already are salted). Pour this over the vegetables and mix everything together well. Serve cold.

Health Rating: High

Ingredient Substitute/s: One thing I didn't add in the salad that is a part of Greek salad is wine vinegar, simply because I didn't have it. Quantity depends on your preference really. Now since I have made this once, I can't wait to experiment with different ingredients in this. Something for vegans perhaps.