Crunchy and Juicy Feta Salad
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Not long ago I read the best explanation of the difference between crispy and crunchy. (I really wish I knew where I read it, because: genius deserves to be recognized. At least I remember the crux of it.)
We eat crispy things with our front teeth, and crunchy things in the back.
Makes so much sense, right?? Nibbling on a tortilla chip versus chomping on quicos.
With that in mind, I regret to inform you that I misnamed this recipe, titled long before I read the definition of crispy vs. crunchy.
Half the point of this salad is that it contains a simple technique to make crispy ingredients the crispiest they’ve ever been. The trick is a cold plunge in a bowl of salted ice water. It will enhance already-crisp veggies and revive lackadaisical ones. Even a 5-minute soak is enough to stiffen and season the types of vegetables I call for in the recipe: radishes, cucumbers, fennel. That list could just as easily include celery, carrots, asparagus, snow peas, and red cabbage.
The key is to salt the ice water as you would a pot of water for making pasta. It will seem like a lot of salt, but that doesn’t mean you’ll end up consuming all that sodium. Only a small portion of that very salty mixture will slip through the vegetable’s cellular walls through osmosis (same with pasta water), but that vegetable will taste as though it was seasoned from within.
Simultaneously, the ice water is going to infuse your salad things with hydration and chill them: we’re going for firm and snappy. I’ve often used this shortcut on leafy greens. There is nothing more satisfying than bringing a limp head of romaine back to Caesar-worthy atttten-SHUN! As someone who really hates going to the store for something that I already have in the house, this save has literally saved dinner many times over.
If you want to keep going, go: thinly sliced onions will emerge de-flamed and ice-chip crisp. Scallion ribbons will curl up and stay perky when dressed. I thought about trying this with watermelon cubes but scared myself out of it. Someone do it and tell me how it goes!
So, that’s half the salad. The other half is the dried-herb-infused vinaigrette laced with dried chiles and dotted with sesame seeds. Easy and delicious. It calls for dried mint, which can be a little tricky to find; you can always tear open a peppermint tea bag in a pinch. Or, use fresh mint, finely chopped.
The THIRD half is the feta, my favorite salad cheese. Did you know that to be “real” feta, it has to be made in Greece? Which is weird, because I love Bulgarian feta. Anyway, rather than crumbling and tossing it with the dressing, which can coat the rest of the salad with a milky and grainy residue, I keep the feta in slabs. SLABS. I love that word and I love breaking off corners of feta planks with the tines of my fork and then picking up stacks of crispy salted vegetables and getting the perfect bite.
As I will be in a half-finished kitchen with limited equipment and no stove for most of August, I will be relying on cool tricks for uncooked dinners like this a lot. I’m bringing my trusted Breville countertop oven and a camp stove and will have a grill. I’m honestly excited to see how these limits change the way I put meals together. Check back with me after I’ve been limited for a few days! Might be bitching by then, but either way, there will be learnings to share.