If you were to travel around the Mediterranean you would find quite a few variations of this salad. It can be made with fresh mozzarella instead of feta cheese. This salad is one of my favorite summer meals; it’s light in calories, yet satiating. There are many more combinations that use different olives and a wide variety of tomatoes.
If you choose to experiment with ingredients you can have this salad for quite some time without getting bored!! Typically, I’ll substitute the feta cheese with mozzarella or asiago, or even fontina cheese; as far as substituting olives, well there are more varieties and preparation methods I can think of, I will usually substitute the plain black olive with some greek ones. More time than not I’m asked about substitutions, and I pretty much tell everyone the same thing: There’s no real science to this, it’s a lot of trial-and-error.
Difficulty (Scale from 1-10): 2
Serves: 4
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients
2 pounds of ripe tomatoes
6 ounces of feta cheese
1/2 cup pitted sliced black olives
3 tablespoons (or more) of olive oil
fresh cracked black pepper – to taste
Romano cheese – to taste
6 sprigs of basil – roughly chopped
Preparation
Remove tomato cores with a knife and thickly slice. Then arrange in a shallow dish.
Crumble feta cheese over the tomatoes. Sprinkle sliced olives over the top and drizzle olive oil over the top of the salad.
Add Romano cheese and black pepper to taste then top with basil.
Serve chilled or at room temperature.
Enjoy your salad!
