You know how on recipe blogs they always tell that *hilarious* story about that one time they went to that one place and ate that one thing and fell in LOVE with the thing and made numerous attempts to recreate the dish at home and they detail all their failings in a very long, stretched out thing you scroll past while trying to find the actual recipe?
This is not that.
In fact, here's the recipe, right on the top of the blog! Who does that? Oh, and I sort of stole it from the back of a quinoa bag, so, there goes the bit about trial and error. Weird! I added my own touches and got it right, right away!
The Salad That I Live On In The Summer--I like to think of it as a classic Greek Salad plus quinoa and mint, so...tabbouleh, I guess? Make a huge batch and keep it in the fridge. As with all my "recipes", this is really loose in terms of amounts. If you like more, or less, of a particular ingredient, do what you like!
2-3 cucumbers, diced
6-8 large-ish cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 bell pepper, diced (any color. You can also use those little snacker peppers if you have them)
1/2 of an onion, diced
1/3 to 1/2 cup Kalamata olives--how ever many you like
1/3 to 1/2 cup feta cheese, diced (If you do not do dairy, check out some of the cashew cheeses and see if you can find something that approximates the tangy goodness that is feta cheese--we found one at our local co-op that had no soy or sweeteners or dairy. You can also make your own vegan feta, but I'm not that ambitious)
Now...you can add some other cut up veggies to this. It's your salad. I am notorious for chopping carrots and celery into every damn thing! However, the ingredients above make up the classic Greek salad base. They also, very conveniently, help me use up the garden veggies that are in abundance relatively early in the season--those pesky tomatoes and cucumbers! If you have some zucchini sitting around, that's fine, but stay away from the stronger flavored stuff like kohlrabi.
Back to the salad ingredients:
3-4 cups of prepared and cooled quinoa. Do whatever it says on the package! Don't ask me, I have to read the package every time, too.
I have thought about this and found that there really isn't another grain I would use for this salad, but if you would like to try some and get back to me, the comments section is open.
There is nothing quite so satisfying after you've been standing around dicing vegetables for half a day (mild exaggeration) as stirring all the stuff together, so:
Stir all that stuff together.
Now we have to dress this thing, and here is another area where you can be flexible. Assume you'll want around a 1/2 cup of dressing, to start.
Do you have a bottled Greek dressing that you really like?
Use that.
Do you have a perfect Greek Salad dressing recipe that you've been using forever?
Use that.
Do you wish I would just give you an ingredient list for the stupid dressing?
Fine.
I use:
1/4 olive oil
1/4 lemon juice
salt/pepper to taste
1 tsp dried oregano (or 2 TBS fresh)
2 TBS chopped fresh mint (optional, but very nice)
Pro tip I should have given you at the top: Stir the dressing together before you start chopping vegetables and let it sit on your counter so the dried oregano has time to flavor it. In fact, do this if you are using fresh oregano, too. Then right before you put the dressing on the salad, be sure to stir the dressing again and taste it to make sure you love it before you dump it all over those vegetables you slaved over.
OK, where were we? You have your dressing that you love, and you chopped all those vegetables and you slaved over a hot stove for like, 20 minutes, to make quinoa. You let the quinoa cool all the way. You stirred all the veggies and the quinoa together, and you put that dressing you love on top of that and stirred it in.
Are you done?
Sure. Be done.
Put a cover on that and throw it in the fridge. Pull it out in a couple of hours and taste to see if you'd like some more dressing, or salt, etc, on it--it should have a nice, not overwhelming, tang to it, from the olives and the cheese and the lemon juice. If you have found you have too much dressing, cure that problem by adding more cooked and cooled quinoa.
Wow, you're really good at this! You should write a recipe blog!
