Jono & Jules do food & wine

We’ve been serving this salad from Ottolenghi Flavour with just about everything this summer. We were surprised at the amount of lemon but it works perfectly and produces a really zingy and fresh salad.

Cucumber, za’atar and lemon salad – serves 4

• 3 lemons
• 4½ tbsp olive oil
• 1¼ tsp dried mint
• 1½ tsp za’atar
• 1 banana shallot, halved lengthways and finely sliced
• 1½ green chillies, finely sliced into strips
• 1 large cucumber, halved lengthways, seeds scooped out, and cut at an angle into ½ cm thisk slices
• 60g lamb’s lettuce
• 10g dill, roughly chopped
• 10g basil leaves
• 5g mint leaves
• salt

Squeeze 1-2 lemons to get 2½ tbsp of juice and put into a large salad bowl.

Cut 7 thin slices from another lemon. Discard the pips and pile the slices on top of each other. Remove and throw away half of the rind, then finely chop the slices inlcuding any remaining rind. Add this to the bowl along with the oil, dried mint, za’atar, shallots, green chillies, cucumber, and 1 tsp of salt.

Mix it all together really well, then add the lamb’s lettuce and all of the herbs, toss gently and serve.

(Original recipe from Ottolenghi Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage, Ebury Press, 2020.)