First things first:  When I encountered my new best friend, she sent me home with a Turkish cookbook.  I was thrilled at first, but I eventually realized that there is much more to Turkish cuisine than baklava.  Here I thought all this time that the Turks had subsisted only on what can only be described as Manna From Heaven, but it seems they eat other things too.  Like lamb, which is too gamey for me.  Or eggplant, which—please.  But, I did come across this simple and fresh vegetable salad which was quite good.

A caveat before we get started:  The recipe calls for large tomatoes, but I had a bunch of grape tomatoes from a rogue plant that appeared in our garden this year.  I haven’t grown them in at least a couple of years so this was a surprise.  Anyway, I needed a use for them and this would do the trick.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 Lg. Tomatoes

1 Mild Onion

3 Med. Sweet Peppers

1 Med. Cucumber

½ C Fresh Parsley

Olive Oil

Lemon

Salt

Dice the onion, tomatoes and pepper, and peel and dice the cucumber.  Coarsely chop the parsley.  Mix everything together and sprinkle with salt.  Then garnish with olive oil and lemon juice and mix again.

This is really much better than I expected.  The flavors meld very well and the lemon juice and salt are a nice accent that bring out the flavors.  I seem to recall my mother making something similar when I was a kid, but it wasn’t nearly as good as this.