Salad Shirazi

My favorite summertime salad is Salad Shirazi. This salad is a Persian favorite; it's from the city of Shiraz. It's very simple and healthy. It will complement any meal!

Peeler

Knife

Juicer

Bowl

Ingredients:

1 large Tomato chopped, (I happened to use a bunch of cherry tomatoes, but any will do.)

1 Cucumber

1/2 Red Onion

Juice of one or 2 Limes (1/4 cup)

Salt and Pepper

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil *

1 teaspoon of dried Mint *

*These are optional

Peel the cucumbers. How many you use is dependent on how much you want to make. I usually use one large one for 4 people for a side dish for our meal. (Or you could use several smaller Persian cucumbers, the ones with out many seeds.)

You will be chopping up the cucumber into tiny pieces, about 1/4" size. Some people like to remove the seeds first, (they don't bother me, so I didn't). You can do this by slicing the cucumber in half lengthways, then use a spoon to scrape out the seeds (and throw them away), then chop up the rest.

I happened to have cherry tomatoes on hand, but you can use any tomatoes. Just chop up the tomatoes to about the same size as the cucumber bits

Chop your red onion. (Actually you can use any onion, but the red onion makes it really pretty!) How much you use depends on how much you like onion, but you don't want it to over power the salad!

Slice your lime. Use your juicer and juice the lime.

(Or not; you can just squeeze it.

Or even just use the bottled lime juice!)

Probably about 1/4 cup will do.

Sometimes I'll substitute lemon juice for the lime, or even red vinegar!

Either way is delicious!

Ok, now mix them all together.

Yep, just pour it on and stir it up.

If you want to you can add a Tablespoon of olive oil if you want, but that's optional.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

You could also add a spoonful of dried mint too, but that's optional.

Now just refrigerate the salad until meal time!