Israeli salad now served in Bhutan!

Recently here in Thimpu, a totally new experience for me, I taught Junu who owns Ambient Café (my favorite hang in town, and where we often hang out with Lama Shenphen) how to make Israeli salad, using cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, the salad that my mom always makes. As simple of a salad as it is, they want to expand their menu, as salads are a relatively new thing here. So, here I am, on top of everything, I’m giving them cooking advice. I know many of you out there are chuckling!!! Especially since you know what kind of a cook and "picky eater" I am.

We prepared a small sample of the salad, and it turned out quite good, better than I expected (I think the lemon must really make a difference). Everyone liked it, including Lama, and I felt quite pleased that it was such a success and that they were happy and that it was going to be useful for their little café, which I have gradually (because of their friendship) developed a vested interest in. But, it felt odd, because I know nothing about cooking and here I am giving them a recipe which they will now serve to many others.

So, if any of you are interested in trying this salad without going to Bhutan or Israel, here is the simple recipe. You'll have to experiment, as I don't know how to explain about exact quantities and such.

Chop up cucumbers (if you can get what Trader Joe's calls "Persian Cucumbers" you'll be better off), tomatoes, red bell peppers and white onions REALLY REALLY FINE, mix it all together and apply the dressing. The dressing is made out of olive oil, salt, black pepper, squeeze some lemon and voila! I would say that in terms of balance between vegetables you want to have a good balance of color between the green (of the cucumbrs) and the red of the (tomatoes and bell peppers). Stir the salad, so the dressing gets to every corner, and then let the salad sit for a little while, this last part makes a big difference!

Good Luck!

Noam