The secret to a good Portuguese salad is….

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the dressing…. and a surprisingly simple one !

Of course it all starts with a delicious extra virgin olive oil, for me the most important basis for practically every Portuguese salad.
Here in Portugal we have many producers, many of them producing very high quality extra virgin olive oil, and nowadays there are also many winemakers who have their own olive oil production.

My absolute favourites are :

Esporão- biológico
Esporão – Quinta dos murças
Carm – Premium
Carm – Grande escolha
Cortes de cima

In fact, all the oils from the brands Esporão, Carm and Cortes de Cima are a good choice so if you have the chance to buy them where you are, do not hesitate !

For the dressing we use :

* 3 tablespoons olive oil of good quality
* 1 tablespoon lemon juice (may also be white vinegar but personally I prefer lemon)
* 2 teaspoons dried oregano
* Sea salt (it is important that you use sea salt and not ordinary table salt) and
   freshly ground pepper to taste.
   Mix the olive oil with the lemon (or vinegar) through the salad and sprinkle with the oregano, sea salt and pepper. Yes             really, that’s all !

The original ingredients for a real Algarvian salad are :  

• 2 large tomatoes       
• ½ cucumber
• ½ onion
• ½ red pepper

Salada Algarvia

But this dressing also works brilliantly with all kinds of other combinations , for example, the salad you see in the first picture.

* 1 box of 3 coloured cherry tomatoes
* a few hands full of watercress (or rucola)
* hard goat cheese
* 1/2 cucumber

Have fun experimenting and enjoy !

This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch)