After a long hot weekend and witness to money foolishly spent on groceries that would go to waste I almost fell into that trap tonight when I looked at the bag of produce I returned from the East End with thinking I needed feta cheese to make a ‘Shepard’s salad’. I had a perfect, oversized August tomato, a cucumber, a red onion, a lemon.
Checking out of the market, the self scanning, self service computerized register wouldn’t read my debit card. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was going to make a perfectly fine cucumber, red onion & tomato salad, sans fromage.
I’m also not going to call this Shepard’s salad just because I’ve seen it in numerous neighborhood Middle Eastern chow joints. I’m calling this salad, East End Salad.
SO you know the ingredients: Cucumber, red onion, tomato, lemon for juice, olive oil, vinegar and Salt of D Earth.
Now to MAKE THE SALAD
Cut a section out of the red onion, slice across the top and chop for minced pieces.
Sprinkle w. S&P but if you’re really lucky – Salt of D EARTH which everyone should have. Please contact me for SALT of D Earth – all organic salts, a variety of peppers,& herbs.
NOTE: salt helps to draw moisture out of vegetables, especially cucumbers & cabbage.
Next the cucumber – peel and 1/4 the cucumer lengthwise. You can do this in shorter sections from the cucumber if you’re not so confident of your knife skills. I used your everyday, regular cucumber, no fancy hothouse variety. Once the cuc is 1/4d remove the seeds by slidding the knife under the ‘row’ of them if you will. Slice the 1/4d section, in 1/2 pieces across the 1/4d sections for bite size pcs.
In this salad I only used 1/2 of the tomato I had because you’ll see it is quite the gorgeous specimen. In any case, cutting the tomato, again, 1/4′d sections, pull out the pulp, seeds and interior walls and thinly slice each section of tomato lenght wise and then a cross, again to make bite size pcs.
Squeeze some lemon juice from a section of a nice sized lemon.
I think that’s it – sprinkle with olive oil, more salt & a small amount of vinegar, maybe 3 or 4 Tablespoons, Dpending of course on your palatte.
So, the next time you see a Shepard’s salad in your friendly,neighborhood, Middle Eastern chow joint, order the fava beans – they’re much more time consuming and expensive to make. Be resourceful, wise and eat well.
Keep it SIMPLE, keep it CLEAN.
Tomorrow morning I’ll make a fruit salad with the nectarine, orange & peach I also picked up this weekend.
CHA!
FoodD*
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