Vegetable salad typical of Majorca farmer's

A vegetable salad that is very popular on the island. It can be an appetizer or an accompaniment. Very easy to make, and delicious to eat: It used to be a farmer's summer dish for mid-morning.

Psychedelic vegetable salad

Sunny Majorca speaks

In Catalan from Majorca the name of this salad recipe, tremp�, pronounced tram-pOH, comes from the verb trempar, which means: to season to make food tastier.

In the hot Mediterranean summers, farmers ate it often, even for breakfast. It is, in fact, a communal dish like paella. You put the summer salad in the center, and everybody eats from the same dish scooping it up with country-style brown Majorcan bread and the fingers as needed. Forks were never used.

Here's how Tonina Oliver reveals to us the magic of this traditional vegetable salad on the island of Majorca.

When little by little the concert of the cicadas reaches that orchestral screech. When you are restlessly awaiting the first cool breeze of the evening to have a bite under a fig tree: This is the perfect time for tremp�. Or for cuttlefish with tremp�.

Les millors receptes de la cuina mallorquina (Best Recipes of Majorcan Cuisine)

Or for coca de tremp�, I should say, another version of the Catalan homemade pizza, which is great for breakfast, tea time, appetizer or main course.

In other Mediterranean regions you find similar summer salad recipes. One particular version of this Majorcan salad adds crushed plain Majorcan biscuits. It reminds us of the leftover dried pita bread added to the Arabic fattush salad.

Regarding the summer salad ingredients

Try to buy the best fresh vegetables. This vegetable salad is based on simplicity as so many non-vegetarian or vegetable salad recipes. Indeed, when prepared with fresh ingredients, this Mediterranean diet dish is surprisingly delicious.

Also, try to get light green long peppers, perhaps you'll find Italian ones which are similar to the Majorcan ones. Green bell peppers aren't traditionally used for this cold appetizer, but if there is nothing else available, they will do well as long as they are sweet. Sweet banana peppers could work too.

Use white onions or any other sweet variety. Likewise choose heirloom or natural tomatoes, which are slightly green.

As with paella, there are endless discussions about which is the really authentic recipe. Below, I am giving you the basic vegetable salad recipe, which is accepted by everyone as authentic. Some home cooks add olives or apple dices, capers, sea fennel, or potatoes.

Ingredients for this vegetable salad

Serves 4 as appetizer

4 slightly green tomatoes
2 large green peppers � cored and seeded
1 onion
Salt
Olive oil to taste
A handful olives – optional

Vegetable salad preparation method

Preparation time: 15 minutes.
Cooking time: 0 minutes.

Cut the tomatoes into wedges and place them in a salad bowl.

Core and seed the peppers and cut them in rings, and then in half. Add them to the bowl with the tomatoes.

Peel the onion and cut it into wedges, and then in half.
- If you are afraid that the onion is too strong, soak it half an hour in water. Add them to the salad bowl.
Add the onion to the salad.

If you choose to add olives, add them now.

Add salt to taste

Drizzle olive oil liberally and mix well but gently with two wooden spoons.

The best way to know if you have added enough olive oil and salt is to taste it. It is almost imppossible to give you an exact amount for this recipe.

The vegetable salad is ready to be served. But if you let it rest for a while, it will taste even better.

Ingredients for this delicious
summer salad

Genuinely Mediterranean diet