Erhan’s easy courgette salad

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While staying with Erhan Şeker on Turkey’s Aegean coast, we watched in awe as he whipped up dish after dish in front of us in no time at all.  Erhan likes to use plenty of herbs (his aim is to grow all 250 herbs in his ‘Herbs and Spices of the World’ book, and he’s making good progress), and he likes his food to be simple, fast and fresh.  He also loves inventing new dishes and trying them out on passing culinary anthropologists.  

To demonstrate these principles he went out and picked a bunch of fresh oregano, sliced up a couple of small courgettes and had this delicious salad on our plates in what seemed like seconds.  Cooking from scratch does not need to be labour intensive.  I think it would also work well with other herbs, such as basil, parsley or dill.  To keep the flavours simple, I’d just use one herb though, two at the most.

Recipe:  Erhan’s easy courgette salad.pdf

Serves:  2-4
Total time:  Erhan made it in about 3 minutes

2 baby courgettes (perhaps 1 green and 1 yellow would be pretty)
grated zest of half a lemon
handful of fresh herbs, roughly chopped (eg oregano, basil, parsley or dill)
small handful of capers (rinsed well if very salty or vinegary)
approx 3 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
approx 1 tbsp lemon juice
salt

1. Slice the courgettes very thinly, on an angle.  You could use a mandolin.
2. Toss courgettes with all the other ingredients, adding salt to taste if needed.