Authentic Greek Salad

"A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins." - Laurie Colwin

Tomatoes inspire either love or hate - there is no in-between. And when I say 'tomatoes,' I do mean raw, cool, gigantic, beefy beauties in all their yellow-red glory. So, if you hate tomatoes, this post is not for you - please come back later. 

...for those who do love tomatoes, glad to have you here.

When I visited Greece a few years back (as detailed in my post about Spanakopita), I was not (at first) a big fan of what I thought was Greek salad. Maybe it was the fact that Americans put lettuce in Greek salad that put me right off it. Neither was I a big fan of raw tomatoes. However, when I went to Greece, I encountered real Greek salad, and my attitude to it and tomatoes improved dramatically.


That's because real Greek salad doesn't HAVE lettuce in it, and is a wonderful way of revealing how amazing tomatoes are.

REAL Greek Salad

Makes: 1 large bowl of salad

• 4-6 tomatoes, chopped into wedges
• 1/2 onion, peeled and sliced into thin half-rings
• 1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced into small wedges
• Kalamata olives (according to taste)
• 1/2 green bell pepper, sliced into strips
• Feta cheese (according to taste)
• Good quality olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Clean and cut the veggies, and place in a bowl. Add as much of the olives and feta cheese (with some of the juices of each included) as you like (I tend to prefer "the more the merrier" as an approximate measurement). Drizzle with olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Yassou!