Greek Sandwich Salad Style

Recently, I went to dinner with my uncle (known as Uncle), who is Gran Fran's brother. For the most part, I'm a lettuce with olive oil and salt kind of salad girl. Uncle ordered just this as his salad, which floored me. I hadn't realized there maybe a family connection to my style of salad. He told me that he has always eaten his salad this way, and that he thought it did come from his parents. Who knew?!

Warm weather has arrived in San Francisco. You never know how long this nice patch of weather will be in town, so it's fun to pretend like we have seasons and cook like it's going to stay warm for a few months.

This weather puts me in the mood for a good salad. I made a nice roast pork with Greek flavor a few weeks ago, reminiscent of a the Greek sandwich I had in Paris.  Since I have salad on my mind, I decided to take all the Greek sandwich fixings and make a huge salad.

Seeing as I don't usually make fancy salads (except for my salad nicoise) , I really had to think about how to layer everything in. Some special dressing, which includes Za'atar, a Middle Eastern spice, added a nice extra kick. It's earthy, sour, salty and just interesting. You can just use oregano here, but I love the unexpected flavor.

You don't have to follow my ingredients exactly, but do put the roast pork, red onions and fried potatoes in the salad as these are the keys to the Greek sandwich-ness of the salad.

Greek Sandwich Salad Style

Ingredients

serves 2

• 1 heart of romaine lettuce, cut into pieces
• 2 potatoes, oven fried (recipe here)
• 8 slices of Greek roast pork (recipe here)
• 1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
• 1 red bell pepper, sliced into chunks
• 8 to 10 small tomatoes cut in half
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon Za'atar spice blend or dried oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

• Lay the romaine on a platter, making a mound in the center.
• Layer on top the red onions, potatoes, tomatoes and red bell peppers, with the pork on top.
• Put the mayonnaise, olive oil, Za'atar (or oregano) and salt and pepper into a bowl and mix until combined.
• Drizzle dressing over the salad and serve.

You can put some nice warm pitas out on the table to serve with this great salad.

Roast Pork: Greek Style

It's no secret that I love a good pork roast. The fat. The meat. The flavor.

Recently, I reposted a post from my trip to Paris in 2010. It covered my feeling towards my first (and only) Parisian-style Greek sandwich. It was great. Check out the picture of it (and me) here.

I decided to make a roast that would mimic the flavors of the meat in the Greek sandwich, while still being not too much work. The recipes I found all involved cutting the raw meat into thin slices, marinating them and then quickly panfrying or grilling them. I didn't want to take the time, nor did I have any interest in cutting up raw meat.

My method uses all the same spices, but with way less effort. I simply marinated the whole pork roast in a mix of herbs, spices and vinegar. The end result tasted very close to the real thing, though I know if I'd taken the time to actually slice up the meat and marinate thin slices, they would absorb even more of the great flavor.

I ended up making a Greek Sandwich Salad (read: no bread, but all the other great stuff that was in the original sandwich) with the cooked roast. Using my handy electric knife, I was able to slice the pieces nice and thin, which let the with plenty of delicious pork roast for the week to come.

Greek Spiced Roast Pork

Ingredients:

• 2 pound pork loin roast
• 2 tablespoons crushed oregano
• 2 tablespoons sweet paprika
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons black pepper

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. In a bowl large enough to hold the roast, mix together all the spices and cider vinegar.
3. Put the roast in the bowl with the spice mixture, turning to coat all sides.
4. Leave in the marinade for at least thirty minutes and up to overnight. If you are doing a longer marinade time, cover and refrigerate the bowl.
5. Once the roast is marinated, remove it from the bowl and place on a rack on top of a roasting pan.
6. Roast for 20 minutes then lower the temperature to 375 degrees and roast for an additional 30 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and let sit for ten minutes before slicing.
8. Slice thinly (I love to use an electric knife here) and serve!