Leftover chopped salad for both lunch and dinner. It was the Ottolenghi and Tamimi mixture of tomatoes and cucumbers with lemon juice, and it seemed to taste good with anything, even when the pairings aren’t supposed to work. For lunch I tried it with a peanut butter sandwich and a peach, and for dinner, we put it on beef tacos and added sriracha. It’s a basic Middle Eastern side dish that I often see in restaurants, although the salad loses almost everything if the tomatoes aren’t seasonal and fresh. In these cases I’d prefer a pickled cucumber salad, or olives. There are variations that include radishes or slices of pita bread, and parsley is the usual garnish. It’s the equivalent to the leafy greens placed on the side in Vietnamese restaurants (mint, romaine lettuce, Thai basil), or the tomato salads and collard greens at Ethiopian restaurants. For European cuisines, I struggle to think of a similar vegetable mix that comes with every meal: a green salad, I suppose, or maybe potatoes.
(Photo: Swamp, Montgomery County, Maryland.)
365 Days of Food 