Artichoke Heart Salad with Olives
A five-minute meze: artichoke hearts, black olives and a lemon-olive oil dressing.
- Time
- 10 minutes
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Easy
- Cuisine
- Mediterranean
This is the only recipe on this page that involves no cooking — and therefore the one that tests the olive oil most nakedly. No heat, no long simmer, nowhere to hide: the taste of the dressing is the taste of the oil. A fruity, gently bitter, balanced extra virgin makes a visible difference here; so, equally, does a tired or stale one.
Artichoke hearts, available tinned, make this one of the few artichoke recipes you can cook out of season. Their pairing with olives is a Mediterranean classic: both are salt-and-acid brined products, and both are completed by olive oil.
Directions
- Drain the artichoke hearts and dry them well.
- Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper into a dressing.
- Combine the artichokes, olives and pepper in a wide bowl.
- Pour over the dressing and fold gently — artichoke hearts break up easily.
- Scatter with mint, rest for 10 minutes, then serve.
Tips & storage
Drying them is not optional. Tinned artichokes carry brine; draining is not enough, pat them dry with kitchen paper. Wet artichokes thin the dressing and leave a pool at the bottom of the dish.
Dressing ratio: one to three. One part lemon juice to three parts olive oil is the classic vinaigrette ratio, and this recipe follows it. If you want it sharper, reduce the salt rather than increasing the lemon.
Grate the garlic. Chopped garlic stays harsh in an uncooked dressing; grated, it disperses through it.
Rest for ten minutes, no longer. The rest lets the dressing move into the ingredients; left much longer, the salt draws water out of the artichoke and the salad goes slack.
Choosing olives. Pitted black olives are convenient, but whole olives stoned by hand taste better — pitted olives have usually spent longer in brine.
Storage. This salad is not made to keep; eat it the day you make it.
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