Greek salad is perfect, if you make it right. Here’s how.

The first thing Diane Kochilas does when our conversation starts is turn her laptop around so I can see what she sees: the waters of the Aegean Sea. S...

The first thing Diane Kochilas does when our conversation starts is turn her laptop around so I can see what she sees: the waters of the Aegean Sea. She is just back from a swim on the remote Greek island of Ikaria, her hair is damp and her smile is wide. On my end of the Zoom, the view is of my home-office wall, so let’s just say my jealousy is palpable.

Kochilas, prolific cookbook author and host of the public-television series "My Greek Table,” was born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. But her familial roots are on Ikaria, famous for being one of the world’s "Blue Zones,” where residents enjoy particularly long and healthy lives and where she spends time (and teaches classes) every summer. As I have written before, some of the biggest commonalities among the "Blue Zones” have to do with food; among other things, the regions share a focus on a primarily plant-based diet.

That’s the focus of Kochilas’s latest book, "The Ikaria Way,” which demonstrates the richness and variety of its plant-based cooking, traditional and modern. "We always associate Greek cuisine with lamb souvlaki, meatballs, things like that,” she tells me. "And in Greek restaurants, that’s basically what’s represented most. But this really is one of the great plant-based traditional cuisines of the world. … It’s just that people don’t really think about it in that context.”

As much as I could talk to Kochilas all day about all manner of vegan and vegetarian dishes, this call has a sharper focus. I want to get her thoughts on what I consider one of Greece’s greatest gifts to the world: a classic that we know merely as Greek salad but is called horiatiki salata in its native land. The name translates to "village salad,” Kochilas explains, but its origins aren’t in the villages at all.

At least according to one story, in the 1960s, in the Plaka neighborhood of Athens, she tells me, restaurateurs started adding a block of feta to the top of a simple tomato-cucumber salad. Why? Because there were government price controls on menu items, and the cheese took the salad into a higher-priced category.