Potato salad is inspired by Cyprus

At this stage of summer, your salads may need more than fresh lettuce for inspiration. A beautiful book about the cuisine of the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus includes salads that would liven up any warm-weather meal.

Blogger and photographer Christina Loucas, author of Cyprus Cuisine (Whitecap, $34.95), suggests choosing from late-summer foods such as ripe and sweet tomatoes, potatoes at their freshest and best, cucumbers packed with flavour and herbs such as mint and oregano.

One of her salads combines the Mediterranean favourite, purslane — rare in North America — with cucumbers.

Other Cypriot favourites — including red onions and cheeses such as halloumi and feta — liven up her recipes, which can also be found on her blog, afroditeskitchen.com.

An Oxford-educated lawyer by training, Loucas worked as an international arbitration specialist in London before moving to Cyprus and then to Victoria, where her father ran successful restaurants and her mother is a pastry chef. (The baking sections of Loucas's book are exceptional.)

Her goal is to preserve the traditional Cypriot recipes of her grandmother and mother, emphasizing how the cuisine of her island is different from Greek cuisine because it includes flavours of Turkey and Italy.

Cyprus Cuisine was first published in 2016 in Italian, under the title La cucina di Afrodite, and features 80-plus recipes.

When making this salad, try breaking the freshly cooked potatoes apart with a fork, rather than cutting them up; this helps them soak up more of the dressing. julianarmstrong1@gmail.com