When it’s blazing hot outside, this cucumber tomato salad is exactly what I want to eat. This recipe is crisp and refreshing, light yet satisfying. It’s the perfect side dish to make with a surplus of cucumbers and tomatoes from your garden or farmers’ market.

This simple veggie salad features fresh cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, not-too-much red onion, fresh herbs and optional feta cheese. Once tossed in zippy Greek dressing, this basic combination is further proof that summertime produce doesn’t need much help to taste spectacular.

Cucumber Tomato Salad Ingredients

Cucumber

Use one English cucumber or two Persian cucumbers. I prefer these varieties to standard garden cucumbers because their skin isn’t bitter and they are extra crisp. You can use a regular cucumber if that’s what you have—taste it first, and peel off half or all of the skin if it tastes bitter.

Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes are perfect for this salad because they’re small, flavorful, and more fleshy than watery. Cut them in half if they’re small-to-medium in size, and quarter any larger tomatoes.

Red Onion

Red onion can be overpowering, so we’ll tame its intensity by soaking it in ice water before using. Simply slice the onion and place it in a bowl of ice water while you prepare the remaining ingredients. Soaking also makes the onion extra crisp, which is lovely.

Optional Feta Cheese

You’ll enjoy this salad either way. Feta offers little bursts of creamy, salty flavor. Without it, this salad tastes extra light and refreshing, like a spa salad!

Fresh Basil or Dill

This salad is not complete without fresh herbs. Use a combination of the two or all basil, whichever you prefer.

Greek Dressing

Finally, we’ll bring this salad to life when we toss it with Greek salad dressing, which is simply the best dressing for cucumber tomato salad! It’s made with extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh garlic, honey, dried oregano, salt and pepper.

Sometimes salads of this nature are swimming in oil, but not this one. This dressing is bold, so you can get by with less.

You can cut the salad dressing ingredients in half for the perfect amount for this salad, or better yet, make the full batch to enjoy on green salads throughout the week.

Watch How to Make Cucumber Tomato Salad

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Who doesn’t love a great Greek salad? Make your own starting with this Greek salad dressing recipe. This dressing is bold, zippy and delicious. It’s super easy to whisk together at home with basic pantry ingredients.

This Greek vinaigrette is made simply with olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh garlic, dried oregano and salt and pepper. We’ll add a touch of honey or maple syrup to balance the flavors. That’s it! The end result tastes just like the dressings I’ve enjoyed in Greece.

Homemade salad dressings always taste so fresh and vibrant—they’re simply superior to store-bought dressings and keep well for a week in the fridge. Plus, you can use healthy ingredients, like extra-virgin olive oil, and avoid unnecessary preservatives. Homemade dressings are a win all around, and this one is ready in just five minutes!

Enjoy this dressing on my Chopped Greek Salad, Cucumber Tomato Salad or improvise your own salad with fresh ingredients you have on hand. You’ll find a list of my suggested salad ingredients below, and keep an eye out for a fresh summer salad featuring this dressing later this week.

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Make this easy red pizza sauce recipe for your homemade pizzas! It comes together with basic pantry ingredients in about five minutes, no cooking required. It’s like magic.

This recipe yields classic Italian pizza sauce for your home-baked pizza pies. Despite its quick preparation, this sauce tastes rich and full of flavor, which further develops during the pizza’s blast in a high-heat oven.

I like my sauce to have a bit of texture to it, and this sauce strikes the perfect balance. Many pizza sauces are either thick and dull or watery and flavorless. Not this one.

I originally developed this sauce recipe for a pizza recipe in my cookbook, Love Real Food. Since I just re-shared my favorite pizza dough recipe, I’m providing my go-to pizza sauce to go along with it.

Both the dough and the sauce come together very quickly, so you can enjoy homemade pizza with minimal fuss. How about pizza tonight?

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I’m having a moment with za’atar, a classic Middle Eastern seasoning. Za’atar is a unique blend of herbal, earthy, savory, tangy and salty flavors.

Za’atar has been enjoyed for centuries on the other side of the world, yet it has gained popularity in the U.S. over the past five years or so. To be honest, I didn’t understand the fuss when I sampled a za’atar blend from Trader Joe’s several years ago. But then…

Everything changed when za’atar landed on our table at Shaya in New Orleans. They simply mixed their house blend of za’atar with olive oil and served it with crusty bread, for dipping. I fell in love with za’atar that night, and couldn’t stop going back for more.

This recipe is my best attempt at recreating the flavors in Shaya’s recipe, and I think it’s pretty close. Za’atar is versatile and complements many savory meals—you’ll find all of my suggestions below.

Watch How to Make Za’atar Spice Blend

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Meet the marinara sauce recipe of my dreams! I’ve always been intimidated by marinara, maybe because I love it so much that I was afraid of messing it up. I finally faced my fears and tried making marinara every which way. This version is my favorite, no contest.

This homemade marinara sauce offers rich and lively tomato flavor. You’ll need only five basic pantry ingredients to make this delicious marinara sauce: good canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, dried oregano and olive oil. That’s it!

This marinara is exceptionally easy to make, too, so it’s perfect for busy weeknights. You don’t even have to chop the onion and garlic. Yep, that’s right—just crank open a can of tomatoes, halve an onion and peel some garlic. You’re ready to go!

This sauce offers lovely, authentic Italian flavor after a 45-minute simmer. I tried to take shortcuts to make it even faster, but no amount of tomato paste, spices, salt or sugar will make up for lost time.

Bottom line: It’s impossible to achieve enchanting, long-simmered marinara flavor in under 45 minutes. So throw those ingredients in a pot, pour yourself a glass of wine and boil water for pasta. Dinner is almost ready.

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This chopped Greek salad is crisp, fresh and overflowing with bold Greek flavors. You’ll see romaine lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, Kalamata olives and feta cheese in my bowl. I opted for cherry tomatoes, since they’re delicious no matter what time of year.

Combined with crisp lettuce and a simple homemade Greek vinaigrette, you have a big, irresistible Greek salad.

Here’s my trick to making the best Greek salad: I chop the ingredients small. That way, you get maximum fresh flavor in every bite.

Authentic Greek salads often don’t contain greens. Greek salads at restaurants in the U.S. typically include awkward and distracting pieces of sad iceberg lettuce. This chopped version with fresh romaine is my favorite of them all!

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I have a challenge for you (and me) today. I challenge us all to start making a giant fresh salad on Sundays, so we can eat salad all week long.

Starting with this gigantic, colorful, dare-I-say the best Italian chopped salad. This Italian chopped salad recipe is bold, vibrant and truly irresistible. It’s the perfect accompaniment to your favorite Italian meal, and it’s also a nice hearty salad on its own.

When you have a really great salad in the fridge, you might even reach for it before you grab the bag of chips. Happened to me! I’ve enjoyed four iterations of this salad over the past couple of weeks (especially the final version you see here), and I’m still craving more.

The motivation behind this salad recipe came when I ordered an Italian chopped salad and a pricy Neapolitan pizza down the street. I requested the chopped salad without the bacon, and it was definitely missing that salty, savory, gimme-more edge without it. Crispy bacon is the only meat I ever miss…

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If you’re in the market for an awkward experience, try editing mushroom risotto pictures on an airplane. I caught the sweet older gentleman in the window seat eyeing my screen while I zoomed in and out on ambiguous brown mush. I hunched over and tried to use my hair as a shield. Didn’t work. I hope he likes risotto?

This dish may not be a looker, but good gracious, it’s delicious. So delicious that I had to stop myself from inhaling the whole pot of risotto while it was still hot. So delicious that I ate it for breakfast three days in a row because it sounded better than anything else. So delicious that you should definitely make this risotto on date night.

I’ve had mushroom risotto on my list since girls’ night a while back. My friend was out of white rice, so she used short-grain brown rice, which took a LOT of stirring and absolutely forever to cook (seriously, over twice as long as white rice). Fortunately, we had plenty of wine to sip in the meantime. We finally sat down around the table with bowls of mushroom risotto, fresh salads and more wine before us.

That brown rice risotto blew away all the other risotto I’d ever tasted. Brown rice risotto is inherently more flavorful, with a light nuttiness and tender bite that pairs perfectly with sautéed mushrooms.

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