In Praise of Greek Salad

I remember seeing the sign, just minutes after disembarking off the ferry that sailed from southern Italy to the Greek port town of Piraeus . We were bleary-eyed from a restless night spent in the hold of a ship, sleeping on rows of dirty reclaimed airplane seats that made up the low-priced passenger seating on this particular boat. My friend and I were young, twenty or so, and on a budget. But my head was filled with the images of the Greek myths I had loved as I child and I wanted to go to Greece. Neither of us had anticipated how uncomfortable the passage would be. When we stumbled off the boat, blinking in the suddenly bright sun, we were cranky and tired, hungry too.

That’s when we saw the sign in the window: Greek Salad.

I knew what a Greek Salad was already, at least what we Americans call a Greek Salad—a simple mixture composed of tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese, and olives. I had eaten them before, but no Greek Salad ever got me as excited as that sign in the window.

The problem, you see, had been Italy. We had been traveling for awhile: Florence, Rome, Naples. We’d seen grand art, we’d been flirted with (and even accosted by) Italian men, we’d eaten near to our weight in gelato, but there had been a great lack in our lives of the past few weeks. No matter what we did, we couldn’t find any vegetables to eat. For two girls from California who had come of age in the low-fat eighties, this was near tragic. One day in Rome we made a pact that we would somehow manage to eat a vegetable by the end of the day and—for about the eighth day in a row—we failed. At the end of the day we decided that the tomato sauce on the pizza we consumed would qualify as our vegetable, it was the closest we got.

If Regan could qualify catsup as a veggie, we figured we had precedent.

What do you mean? I can hear you say, Italian food is filled with great vegetables.

I won’t argue that for a moment. The problem was that all those vegetables were in restaurants, and this was the one place we did not venture. We had read somewhere that if you go into a restaurant in Italy they will expect you to order a full meal, multiple courses. This scared us because we were on a budget as we traveled, rather a tight one, and we feared walking into a dining situation we could not afford. We longed for restaurants that posted their menu and prices outside the door, but this didn’t seem to be the done thing; we longed for restaurants that seemed casual and affordable, but never did seem to find one. Instead we ate pizza and gelato and things we bought in delis.

You shouldn’t for an instant feel sorry for us, that we never had a full Italian meal. We’d been staying with friends of my family in the Chianti before we went traveling and had been very well fed there. Once we hit the road things weren’t too bad either. One day in Rome we had a picnic on the grass at the Piazzale Garibaldi, with all the glory that is that city spread below us, and ate the most amazing pesto on bread with cheese and felt like our lives were indeed charmed. We didn’t feel deprived for an instant; it turns out that you can eat very well in Italy without ever stepping foot in a restaurant. At least you can when you're twenty and you have stars in your eyes.

But we did miss our vegetables, craved them even. When at last we stumbled onto an open-air produce market in Naples, we fell upon the crates of tomatoes and peppers with glee. We bought them and rushed back to the small room in the somewhat gritty cheap hotel where we were staying. We washed them in the bathroom sink and ate them whole, happy simply to taste fresh produce again.

It was this point where the manager of the hotel—an old man who kept finding a reason to come up to our room—knocked on the door. My friend answered, a large red pepper half eaten in her hand. I’ll never forget the look on the old man’s face—surprise, mild disgust, and incredulousness—as he asked, “Crudo?” You eat it raw?

But Greece was an end to all that. In Greece things were cheaper and it was possible to order lightly—and in almost all the restaurants that catered to tourists there were signs that read simply: Greek Salad.



In all honesty, “Greek Salad” is a misnomer. Salads of tomatoes and cucumber are common not only in Greece, but in Cyprus and throughout the Middle East as well. In the German language it is simply called a “farmer’s salad,” but somehow in English the dish got credited to the Greeks and the Greeks alone.

It is a simple thing, this salad. Four ingredients—tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, olives. I sometimes add capers, sometimes slivers of red onion, but that’s as far as I go. I think a Greek Salad that has lettuce in it is not a Greek Salad, and I don’t like green peppers either. The one deviation I have adopted over the years is to dress it with a vinaigrette dressing, rather than the traditional plain olive oil, or oil and vinegar. I find it gives a bit more body to the dish and I like that.



When I think of Greek Salads at this time of year I think of Adam, the farmer at Linnaea Farms that I interviewed two summers ago. When we spoke he called himself a “bitter lettuce farmer.”

Adam was angry—bitter, he says—that everyone has fallen for mixed salad greens and baby lettuce. He blamed it on Alice Waters and California Cuisine. Not everyone should be eating as if they lived in California in the early summer, he said, and told me that lettuce isn’t even good throughout the full summer. By late summer the lettuce has turned bitter and we should be making other sorts of salads, like tomato and cucumber.

In other words, by the time August rolls around, we should be eating Greek Salads.



I made this salad for a party earlier this summer. I had planned on making the red quinoa salad I love so much, but that weekend was hot, blazingly so, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the stove. Instead I just cut up tomatoes and cucumbers, pitted olives, mixed a vinaigrette. It is a simple thing, this salad; at the same time, it’s simply wonderful.

And if you bring it to a party, on a hot, late summer day, it’s likely that you’ll be going home with a bowl that looks like this.



GREEK SALAD

2 cups tomatoes (about 12 oz)
I prefer cherry or globe, cut in half so nobody does that funny tomato seed squirt; also, they tend to hold their shape and not get too sad and soggy if left on a picnic table for a little while
2 cups cucumber, peeled if skin is tough, and chopped into cubes (about 1 lb)
9.5 oz jar of pitted kalmata olives
8 oz Feta cheese
1 tbs capers

Dressing
My favorite vinaigrette is mostly a matter of math.
One part Dijon mustard (one teaspoon, one tablespoon—how much do you want to make? Here I did one tablespoon)
Three parts red wine vinegar (that would be three tablespoons, if that's the measure you picked)
Recipes will tell you then to do five parts olive oil (five tablespoons). I just pour in enough, while whisking, to get to the point when it all holds together. But then again, I love vinegar. Find your sweet spot.
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Chopped fresh oregano is a nice touch here, about 1/4 tsp. Don't bother with the dried stuff.

Put salad ingredients in a large bowl. Wait to dress and toss salad until just before you are ready to eat. Makes a good picnic serving.