Greek Salad (Horiatiki)
No lettuce, no vinegar, a whole slab of feta on top. Six ingredients and the only work is salting the tomatoes.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 330
- Calories
- 10g
- Protein
- 28g
- Fat
- 12g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 600 g ripe tomatoes
- 1 cucumber
- 1 small red onion
- 200 g feta, in one piece
- 100 g Kalamata olives
- 5 tbsp good olive oil
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- Salt and black pepper
Instructions
- 1Cut the tomatoes into thick irregular wedges. Put them in a colander set over a bowl, sprinkle with a good pinch of salt and leave for 10 minutes.
- 2Peel the cucumber in stripes, halve it lengthways, and cut it into thick half-moons about 1 cm wide. Thin slices go limp; you want crunch.
- 3Slice the red onion as thinly as you can and rinse it briefly under cold water to take the harsh edge off, then pat dry.
- 4Tip the drained tomatoes into a wide shallow bowl and discard the liquid they gave up — salting first concentrates their flavour and stops the salad turning into a puddle.
- 5Add the cucumber, onion and olives and toss gently.
- 6Pour over the olive oil and toss again. There is no vinegar and no lemon in a horiatiki; the acidity comes from the tomatoes alone.
- 7Lay the whole slab of feta on top rather than crumbling it in. That is how it is served across Greece, and it keeps the cheese from disintegrating into the oil.
- 8Sprinkle the oregano over the feta, crushing it between your fingers as you go to release the oils, and grind over black pepper.
Horiatiki means village salad, and the version served across Greece has fewer ingredients than the one served almost everywhere else. What gets added abroad — lettuce, vinegar, bell pepper, crumbled feta — is what dilutes it.
Salt the tomatoes first
Tomatoes are around 95 percent water and they release a lot of it once cut. Ten minutes with salt in a colander draws out the excess, and what stays behind is more concentrated and more tomato-flavoured.
It also means the salad does not sit in a pink pool ten minutes after it reaches the table, which is the usual fate of an unsalted one.
Discard the liquid, or keep it for a dressing another day.
No vinegar
This surprises people, but a proper horiatiki is dressed with olive oil and nothing acidic. The tomatoes supply the acid, which is why they need to be good ones — this is a summer salad and it does not work with pale winter tomatoes.
If your tomatoes are underripe, a small squeeze of lemon is a reasonable rescue. It is not the traditional version.
The feta goes on whole
A slab, not crumbs. There are two reasons. Crumbled feta breaks down into the oil and turns the whole thing into a salty paste, and a whole piece stays creamy in the middle so each forkful has cheese and vegetable as separate things.
Buy feta in brine, made from sheep's milk or a sheep and goat blend. The pre-crumbled cow's milk kind sold in tubs is drier, saltier and more acidic, and it is a genuinely different product.
Rinse the onion
Raw red onion carries the same harsh sulphur compounds as white. A few seconds under cold water removes most of the aggression while keeping the colour and the sweetness. In a salad with six ingredients, an overpowering onion ruins it.
Oregano, dried and crushed
Dried oregano is one of the few herbs genuinely better dried than fresh — the drying concentrates its carvacrol, which is what gives it that unmistakable resinous smell. Greek oregano is stronger than most.
Crush it between your fingers as you sprinkle. The friction and warmth release the oils.
Nutrition
Around 330 calories a serving, most of it from olive oil and feta. It is low in carbohydrate, high in calcium, and the olive oil helps you absorb the fat-soluble lycopene and vitamin A from the tomatoes.
Feta is high in sodium, so go carefully with the salt on the tomatoes if that matters to you — a pinch is enough to draw the water out.
Serve it with bread to mop the oil at the bottom of the bowl, which in Greece is the best part.
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