Salata Baladi

Everything is cut to the same small dice, and the dressing is lemon, oil and salt with nothing else in it.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 4 firm tomatoes, in 1 cm dice
• 1 cucumber, in 1 cm dice
• 1 green pepper, in 1 cm dice
• 1 red onion, in 1 cm dice
• a handful of parsley, chopped
• juice of 2 lemons
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• black pepper

Method

1. EVERYTHING IS CUT TO THE SAME SMALL DICE, and that uniformity is the whole character of the salad. A centimetre, give or take, for tomato, cucumber, pepper and onion alike. It means a forkful or a scoop of bread picks up all four at once in roughly equal measure, which a salad of wedges and rings cannot do -- there you get a mouthful of tomato, then a mouthful of onion. The even dice is why this appears beside almost every Egyptian meal: it is designed to be scooped and to taste the same in every scoop.
2. THE DRESSING IS LEMON, OIL AND SALT WITH NOTHING ELSE IN IT. No garlic, no sumac, no vinegar, no cumin, no molasses. The restraint is the point and it is what makes this different from every other chopped salad in the region -- it is there to refresh and to cut whatever it sits next to, and additions make it a dish in its own right competing with the meal.
3. THE TOMATOES MUST BE FIRM AND ARE NOT DESEEDED. Firm enough to dice without collapsing. The seeds and juice stay in and become part of the dressing, which is why the quantity of oil can be modest.
4. IT IS SALTED AT THE LAST MOMENT. Salt pulls water out of tomato and cucumber within minutes. Everything can be diced and kept in the fridge; the lemon, oil and salt go on as it reaches the table.
5. THE ONION IS RED AND IS NOT SOAKED OR SALTED. Raw, diced, straight in. Unlike the bean salads where onion is a principal ingredient and gets rinsed to tame it, here it is one of four equal parts and its sharpness is wanted.
6. NOTHING IS PEELED EXCEPT THE ONION. Cucumber skin on, tomato skin on. It holds the dice together and it is part of the texture.
7. The tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper and red onion all cut to an EVEN 1 cm DICE.
8. Combined in a bowl with the chopped parsley.
9. Covered and kept cold until needed.
10. AT THE TABLE: the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper added and turned through once.
11. TESTED: a spoonful should contain all four vegetables in roughly equal measure. If it does not, the dice was uneven.
12. Eaten at once, scooped with bread or beside a main dish.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Egypt · All recipes