Salads for the arayes

In this post, I described the amazing Lebanese sandwiches - arayes. To go with them we made a couple of salads. Water melons, tomatoes and local feta seemed to be the way to go. Home made yogurt, home grown mint made a good tzatziki. All in all pretty tasty. The dishes were:

Watermelon, watercress, feta and pistachio salad
Cucumber, tomato and onion salad
Tzatziki

The tzatziki quantities are approximate. Also, the tzatziki needs at least 2 hours in the refrigerator for the flavors to combine.

Ingredients - Watermelon salad

3 cups cubed watermelon (cubed like this)

1 bunch watercress

5 oz feta chopped into 1/4" cubes

1 cup pistachios, roughly chopped

Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

6T Extra Virgin Olive Oil (the best finishing oil you have)

Coarse salt to taste

Method

Combine everything except the salt. Add the coarse salt just before serving, so that the juices don't run out of the melon.

Ingredients - Cucumber, onion, tomato salad

A few lettuce leaves 

3 small cucumbers, peeled, seeded, 14" pieces

2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

1 slice of white onion, 14" thick chopped finely

juice of 1/2 lemon

4T Extra Virgin Olive Oil (again the best that you have)

Coarse sea salt added just before serving.

Method

Line a salad bowl with the lettuce leaves. Combine tomatoes, cucumber, onion in a bowl, add the lemon juice. Just before serving, toss in some coarse salt and stir. Add to the serving bowl that has the lettuce leaves liner.

Ingredients - Tzatziki

3 cloves garlic - mashed to a paste

1 1/2 cups strained (Greek) yogurt

Handful of mint leaves chopped finely

3T white wine vinegar

1t tahini

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (the best you have)

salt to taste

Method

Mix the garlic into the yogurt. Add the mint leaves, vinegar, tahini and oil. Stir throughly and check the seasoning. You may need to add a little salt. Chill for at least 2 hours.

Two in a bowl

We did a dinner from some very close friends on Friday the 6th. This was part of the cunning master plan to get them to move back here after they had been in the Arizona wilderness for 6 years.  I just hope it worked.
The first course was a pair of chilled soups (it was, after all really hot that day). One of the soups was the green goddess soup that we did a couple of years back. The other was a chilled cucumber soup whose recipe we weasled out of our next door neighbors. Of course the cucumber soup wasn't identical to the one they gave us, but it was pretty close - and tasted delicious. Why 2 in a bowl? Because when we poured the soups, we poured them at the same time so they divided the bowls in half.

Ingredients - cucumber soup

3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped coarsely

1 cup buttermilk

8 oz sour cream (full fat)

3 oz cream cheese (full fat)

3 small hot chile peppers - minced finely (red peppers, to taste. Because of all the dairy you may need more)

some finely chopped dill

salt/pepper to taste

Method

Place the cucumbers, buttermilk, sour cream, cream cheese and chile peppers into the blender and blend for a couple of minutes - until very smooth indeed. Note the blender does a better job than the food processor. Adjust the heat by blending in more chiles if desired. Adjust the seasoning. Chill for at least an hour - preferably 2 in the refrigerator.

Just before serving, stir in finely chopped dill. Serve in ice cold bowls.