Greek Traditional Salad

Keep Calm and Eat Greek Food.

"Xoriatiki salata" or Greek traditional salad which has been popular all around the world. It’s simple to make, you only need a few ingredients but still it’s so delicious. Maybe it’s the sun ripped tomatoes from Greece that do the job? Or the wonderful cucumber which tastes fantastic or the olive oil which tastes like it was just pressed? I love Greek salads and today I want to show you how to make a Greek salad and what you can do and don’t do when making one.

THE DO’S AND DONT’S

1. The first thing that drives me crazy is when I see that people have put lettuce, Romano sallad, spinach or any other kind of green “leaves” into the Greek salad. No, really no. A Greek salad does not consist of anything like this - it only consists of lots of tomato, cucumber, onion and in some cases green pepper for the base ingredients. No green leaves! In Sweden (and some touristy areas in Greece) they add salad to the Greek salad to fill it out, make it look like there’s “more”. But a traditional Greek salad should really NEVER include any green leaves.

2. Don’t be cheap on the olive oil. We love olive oil in Greece and not least in or Greek salad. Don’t be cheap in the amount but also in the quality when making a Greek salad. Go for a high quality Greek olive oil and add loads of it to the salad.

3. The olives usually used in a Greek salad are the Greek black Kalamata/ Kalamon olives. Meaning, that it’s the olives coming from Kalamata in Greece, and I personally think these are my favorite ones. You can buy these, in pretty much, any supermarket or deli boutiques today.

4. Dried oregano is the herb. I personally sometimes add fresh parsley (I think parsley suits so well with tomato and red onion) but if you are going to be totally correct - use oregano.

5. Feta cheese and not “salad cheese” made out of cow milk. There’s a reason why Greece has patent on feta cheese and that is because feta cheese has to be based on goat or sheep milk. Salad cheese is however based on cow milk. It’s a huge difference in flavor so if you want to do it right - go for traditional Greek feta cheese. (Sure, I might be a bit contradictory because I’m using vegan feta cheese in the photos in the post, and they are obviously not based on either goat, sheep or cow milk).

Greek Traditional Salad

INGREDIENTS:

1 big (or two smaller) ripped tomato 

1 small cucumber (like the sort piccolino)

1/2 small green pepper

1/2 red onion

approx 5-8 kalamata olives

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

some pinches dried oregano

sea salt

1/2 block feta cheese (á 150 g)

HOW TO MAKE:

• Cut the tomato in big chunks. Peel the cucumber and slice it. Slice pepper and onion.

• Place all these veggies in a bowl and top with olives, oregano, salt, feta cheese and at last olive oil and vinegar.

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