What Is a Greek Salad?
What is a Greek Salad – a Greek Salad is made up of tomatoes, cucumber,
onions, green pepper, olives, and feta cheese.
Typical Greek Salad
You’ll see Greek Salad on almost every restaurant menu
throughout Greece, but what is a Greek Salad?
What Is a Greek
Salad?
A Greek Salad is common throughout the whole of Greece, and
you might also see it called Horiatiki, Country Salad, Village Salad, or Peasant
Salad. It’s a very healthy dish and can be served either as a starter or as an
accompaniment to a main course. Sometimes at lunch you can have it as a meal in
itself. Greek Salads usually come in generous portions, in a large bowl.
There can be slight variations in the way a salad is served,
but nine times out of ten it will be a bowl of sliced-up tomatoes, cucumber,
onions, and green pepper, with olives, and have a slab of feta cheese on top.
There will be a sprinkling of fresh herbs over the top, usually oregano, and a
drizzle of olive oil, though sometimes this will be left to you to add for
yourself.
Feta Cheese
Although it’s common practice to put a whole slab of feta
cheese on top of the salad, and let people cut it up as they dish out the salad
onto their plates, when we make Greek Salad we prefer to cut up the feta cheese
into cubes and mix it in with the other ingredients. It’s entirely up to you.
There’s no hard and fast recipe.
Making a Greek Salad
You’ll find a recipe for Greek Salad in the lovely book Ikaria, but you can easily make it up
for yourself. Here’s what we do.
Take three or four large tomatoes and slice them up into
chunks. Finely chop a small red onion. You’ll be putting things into a big
serving dish so each time you prepare an ingredient, put it in the bowl and mix
it around, as this is easier than putting everything in and then trying to mix
things.
Next slice up a small cucumber, or half of one of those big
cucumbers you get in the supermarket. We like to cut up each cucumber slice
into quarters, to give you very small pieces. That way the different flavours
spread further throughout the dish. Mix in the cucumber.
Next slice up one green bell pepper. Again, we like to cut
it into small pieces so that everything gets mixed in more and you get more of
the different flavours in each mouthful. Stir it all into the mixture again.
Then add the black olives. We like to use pitted Kalamata olives
and slice them into quarters, but you can do what you like. In Greece you’ll
find both pitted and unpitted olives used. There are no rules!
Greek Feta Cheese
We then add the feta cheese. As I said, we like to chop it
up and mix it in, but for the traditional look you can put a whole slab of
cheese on top. Finally, sprinkle it with oregano, which always looks nice
against the white feta, and cover it with as much olive oil as you like. Serve
it with some bread, to mop up the juices. We always make up a big bowl, enough
to last us 2-3 days.
For a little variety, you could also add in some capers.
They do this in some of the islands in the Dodecanese. A Greek Salad basically
uses up the healthy ingredients that are available, so if you want to add in
something you have to hand, go ahead and do it. You don’t need salt, though, as
the feta cheese is fairly salty.
The word ‘salad’ by the way, comes from the Latin word ‘sal’,
which means salt. The Romans would make their equivalent of the Greek Salad by
using raw vegetables dressed with salt, olive oil, vinegar, and herbs.
What Is a Greek Salad
Outside Greece?
If you order a Greek Salad outside Greece, you won’t
necessarily get what we’ve just described. For a start, you’re unlikely to get
one big bowl for everyone to share. You’ll probably get individual portions,
often served on a bed of lettuce, even though this never happens in Greece. It
may well have other ingredients, like salad potatoes, beetroot, cabbage, or garlic.
But whatever is in it, it should still make for healthy eating.
Other food and drink pages
We visit and tour the Manousakis Winery on Crete with a wine-tasting and a chance to buy their tsikoudia, sea salt, olive oil and other goodies.
Greek ouzo is an aniseed-based aperitif made all over the country but especially on Lesbos, tasting like a Greek pastis or arak and usually drunk with water.
Athens, an Eater's Guide to the City, is published by Culinary Backstreets, who do walking food tours in Athens and the book recommends the best places to eat.
A visit to the Museum of Samos Wine to learn about the muscat grapes that produce the best dessert wines in the world and also the Greek spirit, Metaxa.
Corfu olives are an important part of this Greek island's economy, with an estimated 3-4 million trees producing olive oil of exceptional quality.
How to make Petimezi, the sweet Cretan syrup made from wine must, is explained to Greece Travel Secrets.
Antonis Maroudas is a Zakynthos winemaker who lives on the 'wine road' and is one of the people who make Zakynthos.
Greece Travel Secrets visits the Zacharioudakis Winery near Ancient Gortina in southern Crete, and does a vineyard tour arranged by our guide from Go Crete.
The Goules Taverna in Goulediana, south of Rethymnon, has been called one of the best tavernas on Crete and Greece Travel Secrets recently visited them.
Information for travelers on Corfu Food and Drink including restaurants and tavernas, Corfiot specialties, desserts, wine and other Greek drinks like ouzo.
Corfu’s special cuisine includes dishes like sofrito and pastitsade and the chance to try ginger beer and kumquats.
Greece Travel Secrets tours the Lyrarakis Winery on Crete and learns about Crete grape varieties such as plyto, dafni, vidiano, vilana, mandilari and kotsifali.
Two of the best cocktail bars in Athens, MoMix Kerameikos and The Clumsies, are making creative cocktails using that most Greek of Greek spirits, Metaxa.
Greek feta cheese is the most popular cheese in Greece, usually made from sheep’s milk, with a soft texture and salty taste and used to top off a Greek salad.
If you're wondering where to eat in Athens and Piraeus we have a few suggestions including some favorites around the Acropolis, Omonia Square, and Syntagma.
Athens Food Tours are being introduced by new company The Greek Fork, and will include tours of the Central Market, and the best street food.
What is Metaxa? Metaxa is an amber Greek spirit combining brandy made by distilling wine, sweet wine from Samos and a secret recipe of Mediterranean botanicals.
Visiting Santorini wineries is a popular activity on this Greek island in the Cyclades, whose volcanic soil provides a distinctive terroir.
UNESCO has made Thessaloniki a City of Gastronomy, under its Creative Cities network, the only city in Greece to be acknowledged for its unique food and drink.
Raki is an alcoholic drink made with distilled grapes and anise, and popular in Greece and other Mediterranean countries, including Greece’s neighbour Turkey.
Athens culinary tours are among the food walking tours offered by an unusual company, Culinary Backstreets.
Greek food and drink is a highlight of any visit and Greece Travel Secrets brings you info about food and drink from all over Greece, from Athens to Zakynthos.
The First Corfu Beer Festival took place in Arillas in North West Corfu and celebrated the beer of Bavaria and of Corfu, in the Ionian islands of Greece.
The Greece Travel Secrets guide to tipping in Greece from two Greece travel experts, including when to tip, what to tip and when not to tip.
Studies have shown the Cretan Diet as one of the healthiest in the world, involving lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, fresh fish, and moderate amounts of wine.
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