Greek Salad

The original Greek salad is a “Lettuce Free” salad.
A few sunny ingredients: ripe heirloom tomatoes, green bell pepper, Kalamata olives and very (very!) thinly sliced red onion… topped with Feta cheese. The dressing is simply extra virgin olive oil and dried oregano. That’s it! Extremely simple and straight forward.
The bite of red onion replaces the black pepper, the olives are a delicious substitute to salt and the Feta cheese gives just the right amount of acidity this gorgeous salad needs.
You can of course serve it with a slice of crusty rustic bread… because you need to catch all the delicious juices from the tomatoes and olive oil. 

I usually dislike raw red onions and every time I see then listed for a recipe I substitute them with scallions. In all the recipes. Always! But not in this one. Strangely enough, the very thinly sliced red onions work marvelously well and balance the flavors of this Greek staple. 

When I was trying this recipe for the Greek cooking class and submitted it for approval to my tasting-committee, their reaction was identical. The red onions are great in this salad! A few days later, as I was preparing the dish for the 14 attendees at Aragon101… one gentleman had the same feedback saying that he was happily surprised to see how well raw red onions work in this dish.

Bon Appétit!

Updated photos: July 2021. You can also play with different types and colors of tomatoes. Take advantage of the summer when in peak season. I had some homegrown oregano that I also added to the regular salad ingredients. It gave a little extra peppery note.

 

Greek Salad

Recipe credits: Rafaella Sargi
Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients
2 lb (1 kg) ripe heirloom tomatoes
1 Green bell pepper, chopped
1/4 Red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup Feta, in small cubes or crumbled
½ cup Black Olives, pitted
½ teaspoon Dried oregano
2 generous drizzles of extra virgin olive oil
1 or 2 slices of Crusty Rustic Bread
*Sea salt (only if the feta cheese and olives are sweet and not too salty)

Directions
You can present this salad in one large shallow serving dish or in individual plates.
Prep all the ingredients. Place the tomatoes, sliced onions, green bell pepper in a serving dish. Top it with the feta cheese and olives. Sprinkle the dried oregano and the olive oil. 
Serve with a slice (or two) of crusty rustic bread.