400 Best Sandwich Recipes, including Lunchbox Sushi

Lunchbox Sushi from 400 Best Sandwich Recipes by Alison Lewis.
Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Reading through Alison Lewis’ “400 Best Sandwich Recipes” (Robert Rose, 2011), I can’t help but think how lucky her kids are. Lewis is a nationally known recipe developer, accomplished cook and writer, a veteran of Southern Living magazine, and her book brims over with family-friendly recipes. She’s a busy mom with three active children, living in Birmingham, Alabama.

Just how did she decide to develop 400 sandwich recipes? She describes in the introduction to the book that her son suggested a cookbook of sandwich recipes as they were driving to the beach. When her editor suggested 400 recipes and producing a “bible” of sandwiches, “I laughed at first, then I was a little nervous,” Lewis wrote by email last week.

Lewis uses fresh, wholesome ingredients in her recipes, always with an eye on what’s appealing to children and how quality meals can be quickly assembled. This collection of recipes is a reminder that the original fast food, the portable vehicle called a sandiwch, can feed active families easily and well.

So how does a busy mom get healthy, tasty meals on the table? “I try to really plan ahead. With three super busy kids, you have to think ahead, prep ahead and involve kids in the menu planning process as well as getting them to cook with me in the kitchen,” Lewis says. “ I also make it a point to teach my kids how to make the healthiest food choices."



Lunchbox sushi by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 A few of her Alison's tasty go-to sandwiches for weeknight cooking are Taco Burgers (a taco-seasoned burger with salsa, beans and cheese), Burgers with Grilled Onion and Smoked Cheddar, Lime Shrimp Tacos, Classic Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches.

This cookbook is also inspiration for kids old enough to pack their own lunchboxes. In fact there’s a chapter with 15 sandwiches that her kids love to pack themselves, including a Garden Tuna Checkerboard Sandwich, the enduring classic Peanut Butter and Jelly (we love PB and J in our house) and Sandwich on a Stick - bread, turkey, cheese, pickles and olives threaded on a skewer served with dipping mustard.

What's next for Alison Lewis? According to Alison, her mind is “always brewing” with creative culinary ideas. Check out her blog, Ingredients, Inc, for new recipes.

This is a fun sandwich from "400 Best Sandwich Recipes" I like the innovative use of tortillas to encase the roll, making it much easier to work with than the nori alone.

Lunch Box Sushi

Serves 4 to 6

1 teaspoon wasabi powder
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cups cooked sushi short-grain rice, cooled
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper flakes (optional)
6 (10-inch) white or whole wheat tortillas
6 sheets nori
1 ½ pounds cooked shrimp, chopped (or an equal amount of chopped, cooked white meat chicken)
1 cup chopped avocado
1 cup finely chopped cucumber
1/3 cup soy sauce

1. In a small bowl, combine wasabi and 1 teaspoon water. Add 2 tablespoons soy sauce and mix well.

2. In a medium bowl, combine rice, wasabi mixture, green onions, mayonnaise and hot pepper flakes, if using.

3. Line each tortilla with nori. Arrange rice mixture equally in center of each wrap. Add shrimp or chicken, avocado, and cucumber. Fold both ends over filling. Roll up and serve with soy sauce.

“400 Best Sandwich Recipes” by Alison Lewis (Robert Rose, 2011), 360 pages with index and 24 color photographs. Paperback, $24.95 list price. A review copy was provided by the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Party on Mardi with this Seafood Creole

Seafood creole with rice by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Devotees of party schedules know that Tuesday is Mardi Gras, the big blow-out before the six weeks of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. We can't all be in New Orleans or any of the Gulf coast towns that celebrate Mardi Gras, but we can bring a little of Louisiana creole into our kitchens. For about 20 years, I've made seafood creole, a great quantity of crowd-pleasing goodness meant to warm body and soul.

The keys to good creole are quality Gulf Coast seafood and the roux, the butter and flour mixture that flavors and thickens the stew. Taking your time to cook the roux to a deep, dark brown is crucial, and it's really not that much time. The butter and flour are chocolate brown in under 20 minutes.

Give this recipe a try the next time you need to serve a crowd. With a salad and bread on the side, it's Southern comfort in a bowl.

Seafood Creole

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 ribs celery, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

½ cup white wine

2 cans (1 lb. each) whole tomatoes

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon paprika

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh chopped thyme

½ teaspoon hot sauce (optional, season to taste)

¼ teaspoon Creole seasoning (Tony Chachere)

2 pounds of a combination of mild fish such as flounder; peeled, deveined shrimp; and bay scallops

Hot, steamed rice for serving

1. In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt butter until foaming. Stir in flour and cook over medium heat until dark brown, about 20 minutes. The smell will be like nearly burnt buttered popcorn and the color will be like Hershey’s milk chocolate.

A dark chocolate roux. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

2. Remove pot from heat and add onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, wine, tomatoes with liquid, salt, black pepper, paprika, bay leaf and thyme. Stir well. Cover and simmer for at least 10 minutes. Remove cover and continue simmering until vegetables have reached the desired degree of tenderness. You may add the seafood now and serve, or keep cooking the base, either on the stovetop, or covered in the oven at 300. (Check frequently to make sure the liquid level doesn’t get too low.)

The holy trinity of creole cooking: pepper, celery, onion. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

3. Season to taste with creole seasoning and hot sauce as desired. Remove bay leaf. Add seafood last and simmer three to five minutes or until seafood just appears done. Remember that the seafood will continue to cook from the residual heat of the stew. Serve over a bed of hot steamed rice.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.



Beets don't fail me now

Ruby red beets are the jewels of the earth, with a sweetish mineral taste reminiscent of soil and for any kid whose ever busted his lip, blood. I love beets, but I can’t help thinking of the word geophagy when I eat them. Geophagy is the consumption of soil in order to satisfy a nutritional need, such as sulfur or phosphorus; it's quite literally eating dirt. Geophagy is a form of pica, the craving of non-food items. In my mind, eating beets is a socially acceptable form of geophagy - it’s as if the beets soak up all that mineral goodness from the dirt and concentrate it in the roots, giving beets an unmistakably earthy taste.

Besides the earthiness, beets are satisfyingly nutritious and I'm probably in the minority saying that the red juice is one of my favorite aspects of the vegetable. I like the purplish red splotches on my hands after handling beets, the deeper stains in my cuticles.  (I also like the smell of garlic on my hands and can’t imagine why anyone would want to wash it away - that sharp pungent smell wakes up my senses, like lavender or rosemary and reminds me that I've been cooking.)

I’m pretty sure I didn’t knowingly eat a beet until my adult years, and now the vegetable make regular appearances on my dinner table. Sometimes roasted, when the fresh ones are available in the fall, excellent paired with a creamy horseradish sauce; but usually in the pickled form, because my youngest daughter adores pickled beets, and will boldly pick them off her fellow diners' salad plates.

Pickled beets are delicious in many salads, especially a Greek salad - a bed of lettuce, a handful of pepper rings, some olives and feta and slices of pickled beets accompanied by an oregano-accented vinaigrette. I make an amazing Greek salad for company that features pickled beets. The inpsiration is a Tarpon Springs Greek salad with patatosalata, a potato salad that begins with potatoes soaked in red wine vinegar. I garnish this salad with shrimp and homemade pickled beets - pushing the potato salad and shrimp to the corners and piling the vinegary sanguine beets in the center.

Tarpon Springs is on the Florida Gulf Coast, famous for Greek bakeries and sponge diving and this style of Greek salad. On vacation in Florida, if I find a Greek diner, I’ll order this salad, and it’s almost always good, but there’s never enough pickled beets, and horrors, sometimes the beets are not even pickled. My favorite version is from Athenian Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida. The potato salad is just right. It’s a subtle thing - at first you think it’s bland, but then you can’t get enough of it. This salad has everything - salty feta and olives,  sweet shrimp, vinegary pickled beets, crunchy sharp peppers.

 

Pickled Beets

This recipe is adapted from "American Home Cooking" by Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison (Broadway, 1999). I used canned beets because my market was out of fresh and I figured a beet trek would expand my carbon footprint unnecessarily. The canned beets were delicious, and I’m sure the fresh beets would be, too.
2 (15 oz.) cans whole beets, drained and sliced ¼ inch thick  or 1 pound fresh beets, trimmed, sliced ¼ inch thick and steamed for 20 minutes or until tender

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons prepared horseradish

½ cup red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a glass or plastic bowl, combine beets, sugar, horseradish and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Store in refrigerator.

Greek Potato Salad (Patatosalata)

6 medium red potatoes

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

4  green onions, finely chopped

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cook unpeeled potatoes in unsalted water until tender, about 20 minutes; let cool just enough so that you can handle them. Using a towel to protect your hand, peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch pieces. Place in bowl and sprinkle with vinegar and salt, add chopped green onions and toss. Stir in green onions and mayonnaise. Season to taste and mix well. Store in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Vinaigrette

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1. Whisk all ingredients together. Store in refrigerator.

Greek Salad with Pickled Beets, Shrimp and Patatosalata

Serves 4

At the height of summer, fresh diced tomato and cucumber would be excellent in this. Don't bother with out of season tomatoes.
 1 head Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces

1 small red pepper, cut into thin rings

½  cup Kalamata olives

1 pound shrimp, boiled for 2 minutes in water with lemon.

2 ounces feta cheese, cut into ¼ inch thick slabs

Pickled beets

Patatosalata (Greek potato salad)

1. On a large platter, spread out lettuce. In sections, place ingredients - pepper rings, olives, shrimp, patatosalata, feta and pickled beets. Serve salad with dressing alongside.

Text and images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Low Country Love: Shrimp & Grits

Breakfast-style shrimp and grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If there is a universal code of comfort food, surely shrimp and grits would be part of it. If I were writing the rules, I would say that comfort food: 1. must be warm, 2. served in a bowl, and 3. be filling to the belly and soothing to the soul. Like the best music and books, comfort food is imbued with a sense of place and a bowl of shrimp and grits, just like Proust's madeleine, pulls me back every time to the South Carolina low country.

I have a South Carolina provenance, spending eight of my growing-up years in the northern part of the state, but I didn’t see the painted houses of Charleston and dine on shrimp and grits until many years after I’d left the red clay for the green hills of Georgia. The upstate town where my family lived, Gaffney, is peach country, where we could buy the juiciest, most luscious peaches imaginable, but shrimp came from the A & P, just like everything else. Before I visited Charleston, I read Pat Conroy's books, in the same way that folks read books before they see movies, I had to read about the low country before I saw it for myself. Conroy is nationally know as the author of the “Prince of Tides“ and “The Great Santini” and dear to this Southerner's heart. He’s a raconteur, a lover of stories and food, and both are given equal treatment in his cookbook, "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." (If I ever meet Mr. Conroy again, I'm going to tell him that the title is factual, but doesn't do the content justice - this book is as much memoir as recipes.)

Conroy's books bring the South Carolina low country, particularly Beaufort, to life - he calls them "psalms" to his hometown. This is his description of the low country, "I cannot look at a salt marsh, veined with salt creeks swollen with the moonstruck tides, without believing in God. The marsh is feminine, voluptuous when the creeks fill up with the billion-footed swarm of shrimp and blue crabs and oysters in the great rush to creation in the spring."

The fishers of the billion-footed swarm are losing out to overseas competion, according to the South Carolina Shrimper's Association Marketing Board. Its website says that 75 percent of the shrimp market has been lost to cheaper pond-raised, imported shrimp. If supporting the American shrimp market is important to you, be sure to look for "American Ocean-Caught Shrimp" on the label.

Charlestonians have many ways with shrimp, (forgive me if this sounds Bubba Gump) pickled shrimp, shrimp paste, and my favorite, shrimp and grits. This is the fisherman’s breakfast, served on the boat or at home, with fresh-from-the-brine shrimp and the Southern standby, grits, which is dried, ground corn. (It’s similar to polenta and a satisfying food for breakfast or supper.) What started as inexpensive, readily available food has become an upscale icon of regional cuisine, and surely on every menu in restaurant-mad Charleston.

My recipe for shrimp and grits isn’t fancy, but does showcase the superlative sweetness of American ocean-caught shrimp. I saute the little guys in butter and finish with a hit of lemon juice. The grits are creamy and rich thanks to milk and chicken broth, butter and Parmesan cheese. My children love this, and it's cooked more often for supper than for breakfast.

Shrimp and Grits, Breakfast Style

Serves 4
Grits
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup water
2 cups milk
1 cup grits (see note below)
2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste

Shrimp
1 stick butter
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (save the peels for future shrimp broths)
Juice of one lemon (you won’t use it all)
Salt and pepper to taste


1. In a nonstick saucepan, pour in chicken broth, water and milk and heat over a medium flame until bubbles appear at perimeter. (Voice of experience: don’t leave the room, because boiled-over milk is a bear to clean.) Add grits in a slow, steady stream, stirring with a whisk all the while. Stone-ground grits take about 30 minutes of patient and frequent stirring, quick grits take between 5 and 10 minutes of steady whisking action. When grits are just shy of done (depends on your personal taste - loose or leaden), stir in Parmesan and butter and season to taste.

2. Pull out your favorite skillet and melt the butter over medium heat. When butter is foamy, add the shrimp and let cook until pink, just a couple of minutes. Stir to ensure even pinkiness. Freshen with lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

3. Serve bowls of creamy grits garnished with shrimp.

A note on grits: Chef cookbooks specify using stone-ground grits, organic preferred. These are not easy to come by for the home cook who shops at suburban supermarkets. And I find the idea of mail-ordering grits to be absurd. Every time I use stone ground grits, my kids pick out the brown specks and accuse me of putting bugs in their food. So, I use ordinary store brand grits in a canister. Look for brand names like Quaker and Jim Dandy and all will be fine. If you live in the South, look for the bag of Dixie Lily brand yellow corn grits. They cook in five minutes and have a perky yellow color that will make you smile.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

The quote about salt marshes and God is from "The Pat Conroy Cookbook," published by Random House, © 2004.

Salad Days for Caesar

Despite the old chestnut about the certainty of death and taxes, April 15th used to sneak up on my husband and me, even though we always got money back. That is, in our salad days, when making amends with Uncle Sam wasn't a priority. The past few years have been kind of hard on our finances, along with a lot of American families, so this year, we filed the return in January and promptly received a modest refund which will cushion our budget for a few months.

I don’t complain about taxes. I complain about health insurance premiums, but not taxes. Tax money gets my children educated, the roads paved, and the water to my house, among many things. When I hear people complain about taxes and government, I remember how Jesus handled the issue. “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” (Mark 12:17).

If you’re not familiar with the scripture, the story goes like this: the Pharisees and the Herodians were trying to trip up Jesus. The Jews in Judea were required to pay a tax, a denarius (a day's wages), but the coin used to pay the tax featured the Roman emperor’s image and proclaimed that the emperor was divine. Some Jews felt that by paying the tax, they were submitting to Roman rule, which led to the learned men to ask Jesus “Is it right to pay taxes or not?”

Jesus recognized the trap and asked to see the coin used to pay the tax. He asked whose image was on the coin and they said, “Caesar's” and Jesus replied, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” I like the next verse: “and they were amazed at him.” This scripture has a lot to say about duty to the government, but I think the key is the part about God. I can give to the government what it requires, but I give God what's really important - serving Him with my time, my heart, my life.

These days, I seem to serve God best by spending my time and my heart and my life in the kitchen. In thinking of a fitting meal for the ides of April, I decided to honor another Caesar, he of Cardini and the famous Caesar salad. Caesar Cardini was from Italy, but he created the eponymous salad at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920s. It’s a remarkably simple recipe - greens, garlicky croutons, Parmesan and a creamy dressing that is tangy and salty and unforgettable. Because this was good year in terms of a tax refund, I loaded up my salad with shrimp and avocadoes.

Loaded Caesar Salad with

Lemon Garlic Shrimp and Avocado

Caesar Dressing

2 large egg yolks

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 anchovy fillets, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine all ingredients, egg yolks through anchovies, in a blender and blitz until combined. Slowly add oil until emulsified. Store in refrigerator until needed.

Croutons

3 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 loaf rustic white or whole wheat bread, crusts removed, cubed into 1-inch pieces

Pinch of salt

1. In a 350° oven, toast bread cubes for 10 minutes. Combine olive oil and garlic and toss with toasty bread cubes. Season with salt. Return to oven and toast for another 5 to 7 minutes, until golden brown and fragrant. Remove from oven and let cool until ready to use. Store leftovers in airtight container.

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

1 pound large shrimp (31/35‘s)

3 cloves garlic, minced

½ stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a skillet over medium heat, melt butter. When butter foams, add shrimp and sautee for five minutes, or until just pink. Add garlic and stir, then lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Use as garnish on salad.

Assembling Salad

1 head Romaine lettuce, washed, trimmed and sliced into 1-inch pieces

Caesar dressing

Parmesan cheese

1 avocado, split in half, pitted and sliced into 1-inch pieces

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

Croutons

1. If making individual salads, start with a bed of greens and drizzle dressing over all, toss to coat greens. Add shredded Parmesan cheese, shrimp, avocado pieces and croutons.

2. If serving family style, put out a large platter and cover with greens. Drizzle the dressing over, add the shredded Parmesan and toss to coat greens. Place shrimp, avocado pieces and croutons in corners of the platter and serve.

This is a satisfying meal using easily obtainable ingredients. I estimate the total at $14.08, which includes the homemade bread used for the croutons. Here's the breakdown:

Eggs .25

Anchovy .75

Romaine lettuce 1.49

Bread, homemade 2.00

Parmesan 1.00

Avocado 1.00

Lemons .50

Shrimp 5.59

Butter .50

Pantry staples .50

If you’re feeling flush, serve with a grilled flatiron steak, baked potatoes, and rich fudgy brownies for dessert. I bought a flatiron for $6.94 and the brownies probably have about $3.oo worth of ingredients in them, so for about $25, you can create a feast worthy of Caesar.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

For more about what Jesus said regarding taxes (among other subjects) check out "What Jesus Meant" by Garry Wills, © 2006.

Snow Peas

I rarely purchase snow peas, fresh or frozen, from my grocery store. (Sadly, it's the same story with sugar snaps.) The frozen ones are flabby and the allegedly fresh ones never look particularly fresh. So, you can imagine the squeal of delight when I opened the CSA box this week and spied real, honest-to-goodness, perfect and unblemished snow peas. I used them in a lovely shrimp stir-fry with a basic fried rice -- using carrots, onions and frozen English peas as the veg. The stir-fry's pink and green combination, suitable for Muffy's favorite Bermuda bag or perhaps a Lilly Pulitzer sundress, was dazzling, exceeded only by the taste -- first-rate.

Shrimp Stir-Fry with Celery and Snow Peas

1 lb. raw shrimp, peeled
a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 lb. snow peas, trimmed & de-stringed
1 garlic clove
1 1-inch piece of ginger

1. Prep all ingredients and place a wok or 10-inch skillet over high heat and pour in oil. I use a wok skillet, seasoned to ebony nonstick perfection through years of cooking. Using a microplane or other grater, finely grate the garlic and ginger.

2. When oil is just shy of smoking, pour in onion and celery. Stir until slightly softened, a few minutes. Add snow peas and continue cooking for a few minutes. Add shrimp and cook, stirring all the while, until the shrimp are cute pink curls, reminiscent of the giant snail in "Dr. Doolittle" (Rex Harrison version).

3. When the shrimp are cooked through, make a well in the center and pour in the garlic and ginger mixture. Cook a minute or so more, stirring to integrate the garlic and ginger throughout.

4. Serve immediately with steamed rice or fried rice.

A Bowl of Comfort

I tried Shrimp Paste with Creamy Grits from Scott Peacock & Edna Lewis' Gift of Southern Cooking. Three words - "calories" and "worth it." It is essentially shrimp sauteed with onions and garlic in butter and then pulverized in a food processor. It can be stirred into hot, creamy grits or spread on toast. I will certainly make it again, but for the regular, dinnertime rotation, I will make Breakfast Shrimp and Creamy Grits.

I usually keep plain quick grits on hand, no fancy stone-ground stuff, unless I'm lucky enough to chance upon some at a specialty store. I learned the hard way that, in order to protect your investment in stone-ground grits, you absolutely must store them in the freezer. My deepest, darkest kitchen nightmare involves creep-crawly weevils and stone-ground grits that I innocently left unused in the pantry for too long a time.

For the creamy grits, I follow the directions on the package, subbing half and half or milk or even cream for some or all of the liquid, and simmer until thick. This usually means two cups of liquid to 1/2 cup of grits. For the shrimp, I melt a couple tablespoons of butter and sautee a half an onion, chopped, until translucent. I add a pound of peeeled and deveined shrimp and stir in the pan just until it turns pink. The buttery, briny goodness is perfection when served over the grits. This is an excellent 15-minute supper, or a nice treat for a hearty weekend breakfast.

Front Porch Tales

Summer Supper on the Front Porch

Hummus & Flatbread

Greek Salad with Patatosalata

Peel & Eat Shrimp

Grilled Flat-Iron Steak

Berries with Almond Scented Whipped Cream

Responsible for the care and feeding of 6 adults and 4 kids, I turned to my summertime standby, a Greek Salad with Patatosalata (potato salad), a dish commonly found on the Gulf Coast of Florida, particularly Tarpon Springs, and made famous by the restaurant Louis Pappas'. I used the Pappas recipe for the potato salad, but went another way for the dressing, using Evelyn/Athens' Ultimate Greek Salad vinaigrette and instructions for assembly.

Here's the Pappas recipe, found all over the net:

Greek Potato Salad
6 boiling potatoes
4 whole green onions, finely chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup whole green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 to 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Make potato salad (makes 3 cups): Cook unpeeled potatoes in unsalted water until tender, about 20 minutes; cool until you can handle them. Peel potatoes; cut into chunks in large bowl. Sprinkle with vinegar and salt; add chopped green onions; toss. In small bowl combine parsley, sliced green onions, mayonnaise and salt. Add to potatoes; mix well.

Ultimate Greek Salad

Here's Evelyn/Athens recipe for Ultimate Greek Salad. She can be found at Recipezaar and on the Cookstalk message board at http://www.finecooking.com/.

Dressing

6 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano (Mediterranean is best)

Salad

1 head lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces (I use Romaine)
3 large plum tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 English cucumber, peeled and coarsely chopped (the long, thin, almost seedless ones)
1 medium red onion, cut into thin rings and soaked for 10 minutes in a small bowl of ice water to make it less sharp
1 small green pepper, cut into thin rings
3/4 cup kalamata olive

Directions

1. Whisk dressing ingredients together until blended.

2. Season to taste.

3. Drain onion from ice water and pat dry with paper towels.

4. Combine all salad ingredients, except cheese, in large bowl.

5. Toss with dressing.

6. Sprinkle cheese over and serve.