This ultra fresh, tangy, herby, and healthy salad will become your favorite summer dish! Juicy summer tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, herby dill and parsley, briny feta, luscious olive oil, and tart vinegar. These ingredients (plus plenty of salt!) all marinate in the fridge and just get better and better with each hour. This is a just one take on the classic Romanian summer salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, and vinegar are always there!). I hope you make this one soon!
Go to any Romanians house during the summer and you will always be served some sort of vegetable salad. The most common version will have an abundance of summer vegetables and herbs to highlight the impressive backyard garden. Then they’ll add vinegar because we absolutely love the sour taste. And some oil because it helps with the texture. Finally, lots of salt really make the flavors pop! That is the basis of a Romanian Summer salad.
I am an apartment dweller so I don’t have a backyard garden so I made do with grocery store vegetables. The taste is still there even if the green-thumb-satisfaction isn’t! I also opted to add some feta to my salad. Romanians don’t always add feta but if there is a cheese we’re gonna add, it is almost always gonna be feta.
Speaking of feta…I have to complain about something. You know the feta you get in those plastic tubs that is all crumbled and dry? That sh-t is absolutely awful. It is like feta-flavored chalk! I made the mistake of buying it once and had to just chuck the thing. I grew up buying my feta from an Arabian market* that sold it in big bins of brine. My mom would scoop out a large chunk of feta into one plastic bag and then a cup or two of brine into another plastic bag. At home she’d store it all into one Tupperware container (read: old margarine container or similar).
*It is an amazing market in South Sacramento called East West Junction. This is where I buy all of my Indian spices, cornmeal (for polenta aka mamaliga as it is known in Romania), feta, and whatnot. They also expanded and now have a restaurant attached to the store. If you are a local you should definitely check them out!
Now, not all stores are gonna have such an amazing feta hook-up but there is a happy middle-man for you regular grocery shoppers. At the non-Ethnic stores, I buy my feta pre-sealed. Sometimes the package is clear or sometimes it is all white. You’ll see -or feel- that it at least has a few tablespoons of brine and that helps stave off any unwanted dryness. However I strongly recommend seeking out an Ethnic grocery store to find a high quality feta cheese.
This salad is a simple one but it truly celebrates the bounty of Summer. This is what you wanna make when the tomatoes are at their peak. It goes amazing well with any king of grilled poultry or meat. I also like serving it alongside couscous. It also works great as a lighter lunch when served with some country-style crusty bread!
Here are some of my other favorite salads:
Maple Mustard Dressed Salad with Oven Roasted Sweet Potato Fries
Chickpea and Black Bean Deli Salad
Fun Fact: The towel I used in this photoshoot isn’t even Romanian or from Romania. I bought it when I visited Rome in the Summer of 2019. I would have loved to have boughten something similar in Romanian but there are very few tourist tchotchkes to be had – how sad! But the Rome towel had bunch of yellow, blue, and red (all colors of the Romanian flag!) so it all works out in the end.
Salata de Vara Romaneasca (Romanian Cucumber, Tomato, Feta, and Herb Summer Salad)
A delicious Romanian Summer Salad that is easy and cheap to put together. Goes well with any and all BBQ dishes!
Ingredients
- 1 lb cucumbers
- 1 lb tomatoes any kind work! I used beefsteak tomatoes.
- 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
- 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh dill
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 tbs white vinegar This is the go-to vinegar in Romania!!!
- 3-4 large cloves garlic, minced through presser
- 4 ounces feta cheese Note 1
- 1 tsp table salt
Instructions
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Rinse and dry your vegetables. Slice the ends off of the cucumber then cut in half length-wise. Lay the cucumber halves on their flat slide then put your knife to an angle and make long, angular cuts. Or you can cut them into half moons. You decide!
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For large, round tomatoes I like to slice them into thin wedges. If you are using small tomatoes just slice them in half.
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Add the sliced vegetables to a large mixing bowl. Add the chopped herbs, olive oil, vinegar, minced garlic, feta, and salt. Use a spoon or similar tool to thoroughly combine the salad. You can eat it right then but it tastes better after it has marinated in a fridge for at least an hour. I love to serve it with grilled chicken, pork, or beef and plenty of crusty bread.
Recipe Notes
Note 1: I most often use Bulgarian feta that is sold in a brine. It has a much creamier texture than the dry, pre-crumbled feta sold in plastic tubs. If you cannot find Bulgarian feta then any other feta in brine will work.
Storage: This salad will last up to 4 days in the fridge in a covered container.
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