Fuel your muscles with this Greek salad

There are few givens on this planet: gravity, the tides, and that whenever you order a Greek salad, it will pretty much be the same unremarkable combination of ingredients.

But if you grill many of the ingredients of a Greek salad, mojo starts to happen.

The pita adopts a hit of smoke. The tomatoes sweeten into little flavor grenades. The cheese—whoa, Nelly—the cheese. One bite will turn your world upside down.

This recipe, from the new Men’s Health cookbook A Man, A Pan, A Plan, uses not your traditional grill, but a grill pan. Never heard of it? Think of your usual cast-iron skillet, but with raised ridges that run the length of the interior of the pan.

Those ridges give foods grill marks and a faint flavor of warmer days and outdoor cookouts. I’m not saying it’s a replacement for your Weber, but it’s a nice go-to if your grill is snowed under or you’re too lazy to fire up the ol' hotbox for lunch or dinner.

One note: The keen of sight will notice that this recipe uses Cotija cheese, which is Mexican, not feta, which is Greek. That’s because feta liquefies into a hot mess on the grill pan. (Believe me, I tried it while testing recipes for the book.)

Oh, and on that note: If you’re wondering how I can get away with calling this a “muscle salad,” that protein comes from the cheese. There are 30 grams of protein in one serving. The recipe in the book makes four servings.

Another note: You can stuff the grilled Greek salad into a pita if you want to make a quick sandwich. But you can also rip and dip, using the grilled pita as an edible shovel. Mmmmmm edible shovels.

One more note: Buy the book for more delicious, nutritious one-pan recipes. (You knew this one was coming.)