Hi, I’m Anna Jones and welcome to my newsletter, a celebration of cooking, vegetables and life. It’s great to have you here. If you have found yourself here but are not yet subscribed then you can sort that out below….
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This salad is my most-made recipe of the summer so far. It's happening twice a week here and it’s all I want to eat when it's hot. There were a few days during the heatwave last week when I ate this for every meal and as someone who does not hide my dislike of the repetition of meals - that's saying something. It's got everything I needed - ice-cold, water-dense veg, pitta shards that bring texture and spice, loads of herbs and a great big chunk of feta on top.
This recipe started life in my head as a kind-of-Greek salad, but I also knew I wanted the supreme cooling abilities of watermelon. At which point it stopped being a true Greek salad. There is some excellent writing on what makes a true Greek salad here. Confident in my new direction, I decided against onion but added green chilli for freshness, which does mimic the green pepper in a Greek salad.
Then I knew I wanted something crunchy and crispy. I had a bag of these Ottolenghi pitta chips which are v good and I kept going back to how good they might be in a salad. So I made a version of my own with different spicing but the same pleasing crunch. They have quickly become my favourite thing to eat. I made them for this salad but also to dip in dips and just to snack on. Great picnic/lunchbox food that stands in for a bag of crisps.
This salad ended up as the meeting point of the best things about my favourite Mediterranean and Middle Eastern salads. There are crispy bits of flatbread or khubz like you might find in fattoush. The ripe tomatoes and that pleasing thing they do when they mix with crispy bread that you find in panzanella. The cucumber, olive, tomato, feta Greek salad quartet that's hard to better and watermelon because it's hot out there.
There are three key things that make this salad really great. If you pay attention to anything in this recipe, let it be these three things.
First, ingredients - it's summer here, all of the things in the salad are at their best now, buy the best you can. As you are eating this quite cold this is extra important, you really want their flavour and sweetness to shine through.
Second - we are eating this cold, at the very least cool. I chop my ingredients and keep them in a bowl in the fridge until we are ready to eat. If you wanted to go a step further you could even pop a couple of ice cubes in the bowl for extra chill, but don’t forget to blot down your veg before dressing as you don’t want a watery salad. If your freezer is big enough then put the bowl and chopped veg in for 5-10 min to get super cold.
Thirdly - pitta crispness, this partly comes from the cold veg but the real crunch comes from the sesame pitta chips. I ask you to cook these for a couple of minutes longer than your instincts, so they are very crisp and quite browned - the exact timing of this will depend on what pittas you use. Thin, Lebanese style ones will cook quicker than doughy supermarket ones so you will need to keep an eye - we don’t want burnt but we do want them quite dark. Getting them this crisp means that when they hit the dressing and the veg they will soften a bit but still retain some crunch. This is key to this salad being great.
Yesterday I made this to take to the park for a picnic - I strapped ice packs to my Tupperware to keep it all super cool, dressed it just before leaving and added the pitta at the park. It worked so well and having ice cold salad (and wine) at the park was 10/10.
This is my salad of the summer, it's been the only thing (apart from ice lollies and cold fruit) I have been excited about eating in the heat. I know I will make this salad every year when it gets hot and it's always going to bring me back to this summer 2025 in Hackney with feet in paddling pools and dusty picnics by the canal. I just love how food does that and I am already looking forward to those memories.
This summer salad is for my much appreciated paid subscribers. It’s worth subscribing for the crispy pittas alone this week but if you need some free summer eating ideas, watch this.
