Greek Salad

This is a pretty standard thing, just tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, goat feta and a homemade dressing. But it looked and tasted phenomenal. I could eat that every day. But only with tomatoes that good.

This is the dressing I made:

1.5 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
a splash of white wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and black pepper, to taste (go easy on the salt if you are using it with feta, since it's so salty on its own)
1/4-1/2 tsp dried oregano (it's nicer fresh, but I always wind up throwing out most of the package, so I don't buy it often)
1/4 tsp dried thyme

Whisk all the ingredients together until it emulsifies. It should look almost creamy, with the flavouring bits suspended in the dressing. If you let it sit - which really improves the flavour by making the garlic punch through, but isn't necessary - you'll need to whisk it again before you put it over the salad. Taste to check the proportions before using it - you might like more olive oil than I've used. (I think most recipes use something closer to a 2:1 or 2.5:1 proportion of oil to vinegar, but I prefer a really lemony taste.)

This makes, I guess, about 3 tbsp dressing, which is more than enough for one huge dinner sized salad (like the one in my picture). That huge salad is comprised of about 1 large tomato (it's a 1/4 of a big tomato plus 3 or 4 cocktail size tomatoes), 1/2 an English cucumber, 1/4 red onion, 1.5 oz (~45g) goat feta. There was about 1 tbsp of dressing leftover on the plate.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised to find these tomatoes at the grocery store yesterday. They always get hothouse tomatoes (which these are, but they're also local to Alberta) but usually only the standard varieties - grape and cherry, cocktail, mid-sized on the vine, and the regular large round tomatoes. These ones were interesting enough (and smelled good enough) that I had to buy them. (Even though that one single big tomato cost me $2 on its own. The tub of Sweet Zebrinos only cost 90c though.)

They still smelled like they were just plucked off the plants today. So. Good.