Israeli Salad

I don’t remember when I began making this cucumber concoction, but I fondly recall serving it in my tiny Kona kitchen to my Jewish friend, Anoushka, and listening to her become very animated with excitement over the memories these flavors resurrected. She lived many years on a kubbitz in Israel where they often ate a similar salad.  Turns out, it’s actually called Israeli salad!  I especially like to eat it with grilled salmon (back in the days when we were blessed to dip net and fill our freezers with Alaskan reds, silvers and kings), but these hot Tennessee summer days my daughter in law requests it with everything  (and I do my best to make her happy:)  As with most of my recipes, it’s super flexible and you can add/delete as you wish (our family has a love affair with cilantro and garlic, so we tend to go heavy handed with those ingredients.)  It’s really good after a day or two in the fridge, so we always make enough for a few rounds (if Erin is around it won’t last that long though.) The trick is to chop/dice as small and evenly as possible and carefully add the salt (for some reason it’s easy to overdo the salt on this one.)  I usually double or triple this recipe.

Ingredients

1 large or 2 medium cucumbers

1 bell pepper (I like to use red, orange or yellow for extra color)

2-3 medium tomatoes (Roma have really nice flavor and texture)

½ of a medium sweet or red onion

1-3 cloves fresh garlic

½ bunch of fresh cilantro (we include the stems- they have great crunch and flavor)

½ bunch of fresh parsley

2 Tablespoons of  lemon juice

2 Tablespoons of olive oil

Salt to taste- ½- 1 tsp

Directions

Slice the cucumber in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds with a spoon,  lie the flat sides down and slice 4-6 even strips lengthwise of each half, then chop in small, even pieces

Make similar sized pieces with the bell pepper and tomatoes

Dice the onion a bit smaller than the other vegetables

Mince the garlic and green herbs as fine as possible

Place all the vegetables and herbs in a bowl, pour the lemon juice, olive oil and salt on top and mix well