Arugula salad with feta and cherry tomatoes
Whenever the sun starts to shine more often I feel the need to eat more salads for lunch. This delicious arugula salad with feta is perfect for a quick lunch.
Arugula salad with feta
When I made this salad the weather forecast was quite lovely. Temperatures where ranging somewhere between 20 to 21˚C and I was lucky that I had only one photoshoot appointment that day. A special one as I had a guest with a cat. Usually when taking photograph of a cat the owner asks you to come to their home. Cats can be tricky that way. But in this case the cat was the picture of calm and was totally fine to roam around the studio. Beautiful right?
What goes into the arugula salad?
- Arugula
- Mixed salad leaves
- feta
- cherry tomatoes
- chives
This arugula salad is the essence of simplicity. It is done in something like 5 minutes and due to the feta is actually quite filling. If you want a bit more body to it, you could add chicken for instance or another protein of your choice. I love also adding a can of tuna. That works well with this too. Not everyone is fond of the combination tuna and feta though. So keep that in mind.
Dressing
As with any salad, and also with this arugula salad, the dressing is key. I love using mayonaise as the base of a lot of dressings but in this case I kept it super simple and used olive oil (use a good one!), vinegar and a little bit of mustard. You can replace the vinegar with lemon or lime juice if you want.
Toppings
Once you have the basics for this quick arugula salad you can add additional toppings to it. Like I said if you want more protein you can add chicken or tuna. But you can also enhance this salad more by sprinkling some walnuts over the top, sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds. I also love swapping out the feta for parmesan flakes. As you can see, lots of options to spice up this simple salad.
Arugula or rocket
The main component in this salad is arugula. Now arugula has a slightly bitter taste that not all people love. A little bitterness in vegetables is actually really good for your health, but in most modern crops it is removed through selection. If you grown your own arugula in the garden you will immediately notice the big difference with commercial varieties. Your homegrown arugula will be bitter and even spicy. I used to have a patch of different salad leaves and was blown away with the taste. Arugula is also called rocket.
Of course if you want to eat this arugula salad with feta without the arugula (that would be a bit weird though, wouldn’t it?) you can of course substitute for another type of lettuce or even baby spinach.
I’ve made this arugula salad many times in the meantime and I often change the dressing to be mayonaise based. In that case you simply take two tablespoons of mayonaise, add juice of half a lemon, some pepper and salt and mix together.
Arugula salad with feta and cherry tomatoes
Ingredients
- 75 gr rocket arugola
- 50 gr Mixed salad leaves can be anything you like
- 75 gr Feta crumbled
- 100 gr Cherry tomatoes in quarters of halves
- 1 tbsp Chives chopped
Dressing
- 1 tbsp White wine vinegar
- 3 tbsp Extra virgin Olive oil
- 1/2 tsp mustard I used coarse mustard
- pepper and salt to taste
- Start by making the dressing for the salad. Mix all the ingredients and whisk them till it comes together.
- Cut the tomatoes and divide the salad leaves between two bowls. Add the tomatoes and crumble the feta over the top.
- Sprinkle some of the chives over the salad and serve with the dressing on the side.
Nutrition Information per portion
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
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