Horiatiki Salata

This salad is the real Greek salad. The "greek salads" you get in America are not real greek salads. They are just garden salads with some crumbled salty feta, a couple olives, and fattening creamy dressing. If you go to Greece and order a greek salad it will look and taste much different. Horiatiki means "villagers salad". It's a salad with whatever is freshest. The main difference is that there is no lettuce. The important thing about this salad is to get the freshest and highest quality ingredients possible. The tomatoes, olive oil, and feta are the three ingredients you should try to get the highest quality of. Don't use the domestic feta, go to a specialty store and buy either Dodonis or Barrel feta. These are much less salty, and way creamier than the domestic feta. You won't want to eat that salty crumbled domestic feta after you try these. This salad is very colorful and very healthy. I eat this salad every day, usually twice a day. One day in Greece I ate 4 of them in one day. I only use olive oil as the dressing because I'm fortunate enough to have Cretan olive oil from my Theo and Thea. If you have store bought olive oil, you can put some vinegar on the salad too. When you are done the salad, there should be a pool of olive oil and tomato juice with feta swimming in it. This is the best part in my opinion because you can soak it all up with a nice piece of crusty bread. This traditional greek salad is going to change the way you see Greek salads. Try it!

Recipe (serves 2)

3 tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1/2 pepper (any pepper works here)
1/3 onion (red or white)
5-10 kalamata olives
2 pepperoncinis
A huge slice of high quality Feta cheese
Oregano
Extra Virgin olive oil

Cut the tomatoes into large pieces. Peel and slice the cucumbers. Slice the pepper into thin rings then cut in half. Slice the onion in thing long pieces. All of the vegetables do not need to be cut perfectly or uniform in size. This salad is rustic. Put these ingredients into a bowl and mix. Then add the olives and pepperoncini. Slice a large piece of feta and cover with oregano. Now load the salad with olive oil. I mean a lot of olive oil. There should be a pool in the bottom of the bowl. Enjoy!