Red, white and green...

...Was the theme for the royal foodie joust this month. And with the weather here touching 45 degrees c last week, I couldn't help but remember our wonderful vacation two years ago in Santorini…we landed during a freak spell of cold, driving rain in May, and wondered what kind of beach vacation this would be. But once it cleared up we had an amazing time, marveling at the beautiful white colour of buildings (A's theory was that they were regularly daubed with Greek yogurt) and the blues of church domes, the sky and the water. We also had amazing food – delicious, low calorie, incredibly healthy and flavourful and just perfect for hot weather.

I decided to do more than reminisce and to recreate at least some of the culinary flavours of Greece tonight in my kitchen. So at long last I experimented with the perfect summer salad – watermelon, with feta topped with crushed mint. A splosh of balsamic vinegar and the bite of thinly sliced red onion just accentuated the flavours more and left us feeling fulfilled and cooled down in this hot climate.

Conversely enough, the red of the watermelon looks cool despite the weather, perhaps because of the remembered juiciness, while the cool white of the feta reminded me of an incident in Santorini, where we had seen far-off snow-clad peaks...or so we thought until we drew closer and realised it was a hilltop covered with snow-white houses! And the green of the crushed mint and its fragrance add just that little spring in one's step, that light touch of freshness...

Greek Salad

I'm a big lover of salads. South Indian style, with finely cut vegetables, some soaked lentils, coconut, topped with a tadka or Western style, with a vinaigrette dressing. One of my favourite salads is the Greek style salad, with lettuce, cucumber, onions, tomatoes and feta cheese in olive oil and vinegar or lemon. Flavours, the Italian restaurant at Defence Colony in Delhi does one of the best Greek Salads I've ever had, fresh, bursting with flavour and plentiful in the vegetables. Last year, when we holidayed in Greece, I was really looking forward to having lots of Greek salad. However, much to my dismay, it turned out to be a real disappointment. The salads had an assortment of vegetables alright, but the feta cheese was just put on top of the vegetables in a huge, thick slab, rather than being cut into smaller cubes which then mixed with the vegetables and created a unified flavour. The olive oil too tended to be rather heavy.

I love making Greek salad at home through out Delhi winters. You get a great supply of salad vegetables and these days any good grocery store will provide Danish feta cheese in cartons. It makes a good, filling appetiser which is great since I'm always looking for healthy and low-cal recipes. The kids love it too and it's a versatile style of salad since it can accommodate almost any salad veggies you'd like to use.

Last night we had one of my variations on the theme:
Ingredients
1 head of lettuce, washed in icy-cold water, dried and hand-torn into bite-sized pieces
2 green bell peppers, cut into thin strips
2 tomatoes, cubed
2 spring onions, chopped fine
Walnuts, half cup, broken into halves
Raisins, quarter cup
Italian extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon
Juice of half - 1 lemon ( to taste)
Feta cheese, a 4 inch by four inch slab, about hald cm thick, cut into small pieces
Assemble all the vegetables, nuts and raisins together. Mix the oil and lemon juice in a cup, whisking well to ensure it's well-blended and pour over the vegetables. Add the feta cheese and mix everything together. In case the feta is extra-melty, as Danish feta tends to be, you can mix it with the oil and lemon juice and whisk all three together to make a smooth dressing.
You can ring any number of changes on this theme - replace the walnuts with pine nuts, use grapes instead of raisins, walnut oil instead of olive oil, add baby corn, red and yellow bell peppers, fresh green peas, steamed asparagus spears, even steamed green beans...If you find the feta too salty, you can also blend it with a bit of yoghurt.