Authentic Greek Salad

tried and true!

Unless you live in Greece, some of the available ingredients will prevent this from being totally authentic. By the way, there it's just called "salad". Every restaurant and home serves a version of this with several consistencies: tomato, cucumber, olives, and never lettuce. A great salad to make in summer when you're out of lettuce but have everything else.

portions vary depending on how many you want to feed--there's no getting it wrong though.

• 2-3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• handful of black olives (ideally Kalamata)
• oregano to taste (Greek oregano is preferred, but yeah whatever)
• extra virgin olive oil
• optional: chopped onion, chopped bell pepper, capers, feta (I'm vegan so I always leave this off)

Toss the veggies together in a serving bowl, and sprinkle with dried oregano. Drizzle olive oil over the top. Serve with bread to sop up the wonderful juices.

-- JillW - 11 Aug 2010