citrus salad

I've found a great salad recipe that uses none of the traditional salad ingredients. Well, I suppose olive oil is fairly traditional, but this salad does away with lettuce entirely. The salad is composed of orange slices, oil-cured black olives, cucumber slices, thinly sliced red onion, and olive oil. It is simple but delicious, and great for the blazingly hot days we've had this last week. I used Valencia oranges after discovering that Whole Foods navel oranges had no flavor whatsoever. I suggest you sample the oranges first if possible. But the salad was even pretty good with tasteless oranges. But it is much better with flavorful and juicy ones.

Here's the recipe:

• 2 oranges, peeled and separated into half
• 12 oil-cured black olives, quartered (not canned black olives unless you live in Europe and can get good canned oil-cured black olives).
• 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1/4 very thinly sliced red onion
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh mint

Slice the oranges across their latitude lines into 1/4 inch thick or so slices. Layer all of the ingredients together on a plate, and drizzle with the olive oil. Let marinate for a while, or eat right away.