All Four Burners

Greek Salad with Mixed Greens and Dill

Posted on 07 September 2010

It’s funny how the mind works.

I was all set to spend this weekend cooking up a grand meal inspired by last weekend’s trip to Dosa. Mind you, despite the brown skin, I have absolutely no skills when it comes to making Indian food. My mother is a wiz in the kitchen, but a poor teacher (in the kitchen — calculus was a whole different issue). Or maybe I’m just impatient. Or maybe (probably) both.

But then this NPR article provided me with another inspiration altogether. It’s only the pinnacle of the Belmont social calendar: the annual Greek festival!

Duh, how could I forget? It’s every Labor Day weekend. We finally went for the first time last year and, boy howdy, did we eat our little hearts out. Almost literally. I was so full that I vowed to never eat again.

But you can’t keep a good eater down.

So off we toddled down to the Church of the Holy Cross for our fill of rice pilaf, pastisio, and loukoumades. We figured that the walk there and back, especially the scary giant hill coming back, would nullify the thousands of calories ingested while there.

The highlight of the festival–other than the food–was a peek inside the church with its stunning mosaic work. We made it there just in time for their tour detailing the origin of the Eastern Orthodox church (really? am I alone here in remembering the Great Schism?) and the church’s mosaic work.

But in spite of eating so much (again), I craved more Greek food the next night. I veered wildly from the rich, carb- and calorie-laden foods of the festival to more straight-forward dishes. The first: salad. The second: meat.

The first, this so-called “country” salad, is a fun mix of less common greens and doesn’t include the typical Greek salad trifecta of feta, olives, and cucumber. Instead, it sticks to simpler, grassier flavors, although I did throw in some tomatoes and red onions for good measure.

You can vary the mix of greens to your own taste. The dandelion and mustard greens, in particular, are fairly bitter, but are well complemented by the spinach, watercress, and wonderfully dilly dill.

My belly ached no more.

Adapted from Gourmet

* I tore these up, rather than chopping. Because I am crazy like that.

** I didn’t use all of the dressing, only about 2/3 of it.

P.S. I’m not loving the final shots of the salad, but think that they helped to finally convince Matt that I need better lighting. Bwa ha ha.

P.P.S. I apologize for the two split infinitives in this post. I may have to renounce the grammar queen title.