Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Pita Bread and Za'atar

What do you do with dozens of cucumbers?  Almost all recipes now ask for English cucumbers because they don't have any seeds, but our CSA gives us tons and tons of regular cucumbers.  I have a few cucumber soup recipes tee-ed up to make, but somehow when I start messing around in the kitchen to make lunch or dinner, the thought of a cold cucumber soup just doesn't appeal.  So this afternoon for lunch I decided to make a tomato and cucumber salad.  Did I mention that we had a few gorgeous tomatoes from our CSA as well?

I liked this salad.  It was cool and fresh and reminded me of a Persian shirazi salad.  Alex wished that the salad had less parsley and more fresh mint.  I told him there was no fresh mint in here to begin with so more would really mean adding any fresh mint.  I see what he means about the mint, it would be a nice addition to the parsley, but I really love the taste of fresh flat-leaf parsley!  And I think the combination of parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, evoo and lemon juice is a wonderful one, but if you're not a huge parsley fan then go ahead and cut down on the amount of parsley and add in some mint!  Salads are great like that because you can adapt them so easily to your own tastes and preferences.

Recipe after the jump!

Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Pita Bread and Za'atar

Gourmet

May 2000

INGREDIENTS:

3 tomatoes, chopped
1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, or to taste
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Accompaniments: warm pita bread, olive oil, and Za'atar

Stir together tomatoes, cucumber, scallions, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze lemon juice over salad and stir. Drizzle oil over salad and stir.