Should salads be included in a
cookbook? Of course, the answer is a resounding Yes! Cooking is more about
preparing a good meal than about heating up ingredients. Half of our daily
meals are made of fresh, healthy, and appetizing salads.
Actually, in a salad, there is no
way to mask the bad quality of an ingredient and no preparation can be more
authentic. A salad complements any meal with a refreshing episode and can even
be a meal in itself.
Salads are also a territory for
inspiration and exploration. In your search for new associations of taste and
textures, you can combine all kinds of ingredients, soft and crunchy, all kinds
of herbs and spices and even leftovers.
In my view, any couple intent on lasting
has to share a number of things, including meal preparation. My wife Meredith
has always concentrated on salads and desserts, salads being where she allows
herself naturally to be the most creative.
She has tried many combinations over
the years, gradually focusing on this vinaigrette we use in most circumstances.
It starts with good balsamic vinegar and olive oil, the “secret” ingredients
being shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) and a pinch of curry. These 2 ingredients
blend in naturally, adding sweetness and a nutty flavor.
Our proportions would be the
following:
×
1 tbsp.
of vinegar
×
1 tbsp.
of shoyu
×
Salt,
pepper, a pinch of curry
×
5 tbsp.
of olive oil
Mix and use immediately.
My father loved to lay down rules
and enforce them. One of those was “all salads go with garlic, except butter
lettuce which goes with onions”. I still feel these rules make gustatory sense
and abiding by them is the least I can do.
For lettuce, I will add some minced onions to the basic salad dressing.
For romaine, endive, frisée, escarole, it will be minced garlic.
For arugula and mizuna, it
might be pure dressing most of the time, with some diced peeled ripe tomato
thrown in for color and sweet contrast.
Cooked beet salads also demand garlic (and a bit of mustard), unless you
use dill as an accompanying herb.
Sliced raw celery is also very refreshing. It also asks for garlic, but
prefers lemon to vinegar. So do grated
carrots.
All beet roots combine well with
dill, with which they share popularity in northern Europe.
If you want to make a visually
attractive salad for a guest meal, use beets of different colors. Chiogga beets
even display a feat of concentric circles when sliced.
It takes about 20/25 minutes in a
gentle boil to cook beets. Probe them with a fork to know when it’s time to
stop.
For a change, combine beets with
parched pine nuts or roasted almonds.
You could also add a chopped
hard-boiled egg into the salad bowl.
You will need:
×
1 lb of
cooked chickpeas (see Vegetable section)
×
½ sweet Mayan onion
×
2 tsp. of
cumin
×
Parsley
or other favorite herb, fresh tarragon, basil, etc…
×
Meredith’s
vinaigrette (see above)
Prepare a vinaigrette, add the
cumin.
Chop the onion.
Throw in the ingredients and let sit
and permeate for 5/10 minutes.
Add chopped parsley and serve.
Similar to the chickpea salad, with
pot-au-feu meat leftovers, cut in ½ inch pieces, instead.
You can also use meat and
chick peas: it all marries very well.
This combination, born in the south
of France, provides a meal in itself. Therefore, it has travelled very far and
sometimes pretty well. It is based on the combination of the following:
×
¼ sweet
onion
×
½ sweet
pepper, green or red
×
½ lettuce
×
2-3
tomatoes
×
1 or 2
hard-boiled eggs cut in 4
×
½ cup
Niçoise olives
×
4-5
oil-preserved anchovies
×
Meredith’s
vinaigrette (see above)
In this versatile salad, the core
taste comes from peppers, tomatoes, eggs, and anchovies. However, everything
can be changed according to availability or taste. Small “Niçoise” black olives
can be replaced by larger green ones. Although it is based on uncooked
vegetables, many people will add steamed potatoes, cooked string beans or tuna
leftovers.
Ordering this mythical salad in an
American restaurant is a sure way to test not so much the authenticity of the
recipe but the quality of the chef’s approach to cooking. At home, it could
serve as an excellent appetizer in a festive meal, but it might take a lot of
your time just when you want to be with your guests. It is better to practice
making it as the only family lunch dish until you can make it easily and
without stress.
You will need:
×
1 romaine
lettuce (leave the outer green leaves out)
×
4
anchovies fillets conserved in oil
×
1 tsp
Dijon mustard
×
1 egg
×
1 clove
of garlic
×
Juice of
½ lemon
×
¼ cup
freshly grated parmesan cheese
×
Olive
oil, salt and pepper
×
Fresh
croutons, made from baguette slices for example.
Prepare the croutons first:
Cut some baguette slices.
Spread them on a pan over low heat.
When they have started to firm up,
rub them with the garlic clove, cut them in ½ inch pieces.
Put back in the pan with a ribbon of
olive oil and some salt.
They should be perfectly appetizing
within 10 minutes.
The salad dressing is an emulsion:
Mince the garlic clove and the
anchovies as finely as you can.
Put in the bowl, with the mustard,
salt, pepper, the lemon juice and whisk actively.
Add now the egg, either raw or
“heated” for 50 seconds in boiling water. Whisk actively.
Pour the oil slowly and regularly
while stirring constantly so that the dressing emulsifies properly.
It’s time now to dress the salad:
Add the romaine leaves, hand torn in
manageable pieces.
Toss, or better yet mix with clean
hands to ensure proper coating.
Add the parmesan cheese, the
croutons, and toss again. Serve immediately.
Oops! I forgot to use the customary
Worcestershire sauce and it is still good!
This refreshing salad just uses
finely chopped parsley as its green component, instead of lettuce or arugula.
It is inspired from the original Lebanese tabouleh, a version of tabouleh where
bulgur practically disappears, replaced by lots of parsley and fresh mint.
It will be good whichever way you
finish it. Make a vinaigrette with lemon instead of vinegar, add 2 tbsp. of
finely diced sweet onions in the dressing and sprinkle with a diced tomato.
Spread out for taste and visual delight. Just add chopped mint and some grains
of steamed bulgur, and you are back to the authentic Lebanese tabouleh.
This salad was born in Italy’s south,
and adapted the world over in different disappointing renditions. Its secret to
greatness is to use only the best ingredients you can find:
×
4 to 5
vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes
×
Mozzarella
di bufala (only this original production made from water buffalo milk will do)
×
Fresh
basil
×
Olive
oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper
Peel the outer skin, which should be
easy if the tomato is very ripe. (1)
Slice them, trying to eliminate a
few seeds while maintaining a good visual appearance. Set out on a large plate.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper, vinegar
(in a controlled way).
Place on each slice a piece of
mozzarella (cut up with your fingers and not a knife) and a piece of basil.
Doing it this way takes extra time, but this time is well spent for your future
enjoyment.
Pour a ribbon of olive oil on top.
Admire. Serve.
In the summertime, our French garden
produces more tomatoes that we can ever eat! We never tire of them, trying to
blind taste the differences between Black Russian and Pineapple, Yellow Belgian
or Green Zebra. And we accommodate them with simple dressings, or even no
dressing at all, treating them as the delicious fruit they are.
One ritual stays the same: we always
peel them, slice them into thick slices and spread them over a large plate.
What changes is the topping. Our local sweet onion, sometimes helped by a
fragrant garden sweet pepper, is a favorite.
You will need:
×
2 lbs of
potatoes
×
3 fennel
(anise) heads
×
Fresh
tarragon
×
Meredith’s
vinaigrette (see above)
Clean potatoes thoroughly and cut
into ½ inch pieces.
New potatoes with thin skin do not
need to be peeled.
Steam your potatoes for about 10/15
minutes until done. Keep warm.
Meanwhile, clean the fennel heads,
cut in 2 and carve out the hard bottom part. Cut into 1/8 inch thick slices.
Prepare a vinaigrette, throw in the
ingredients and serve. Add tarragon to taste.
Et voilà! Appreciate now the
heavenly contrast between warm mild potatoes and crunchy fragrant fennel! (2)
Some arugula, our favorite leaf,
some ripe tomato and onion dices for color, 4 or 5 chopped anchovy fillets for
the dark side, and the usual dressing.
Crab or shrimp go well with
mayonnaise (see Shellfish and Egg section) and go well with grapefruit (sweet
Oro Blanco or Cocktail varieties for example). That combination is easy to make
and enjoy. I would add some tomato sauce and a bit of Angostura sauce or the
like to give it a bite. If not available, I would borrow a tablespoon of
ketchup from my neighbors. They will never believe it!
There are two main ingredients:
fresh spinach and “mi-cuit” foie gras, meaning freshly cooked rather than
coming out of a can. Just spread 4 or 5 appetizing leaves of raw spinach on a
plate and the slice of foie gras on top.
Vinaigrette won’t do. I would
recommend making a festive dressing by sautéing shallot and ginger, adding a
bit of cognac and white wine, and reducing to 1 or 2 tbsp. The final dressing
would be made of that reduction, plus 1 tsp. vinegar, 3 tbsp. olive oil, 1 drop
sesame oil, salt and pepper. Sprinkle only the spinach with it.
This variation on the previous
salad, even more festive, assembles ingredients which are not usually in season
at the same time. Locavores will have to make some exception to their rules. In
any case, if it is indeed consumed on New Year’s Eve, they can make a new
year’s resolution the next day. The idea is to marry different flavors,
different ingredients coming from different parts of the world artistically
arranged into individual plates. For example, this symphony of sweet and
bitter:
×
2 candied
kumquats
×
1 piece
of candied red pepper (see Vegetables)
×
1 green
asparagus (barely cooked, still crunchy)
×
3 or 4
leaves of raw spinach
×
1 slice
of duck foie gras (let’s say the next best thing you can find locally, in the
same spirit)
The salad dressing could be the same
as in the preceding recipe. You can candy kumquats by simmering them for an
hour in a sugar syrup. The hardest part in the US will be to find that slice of
duck foie gras. You may have to settle for less, either a can or jar of
preserved foie gras or some well-made pâté. You may also maintain the festive
spirit by switching to fresh Dungeness crab meat.
Clean some leeks (see Vegetable
section) and steam them for 10 minutes.
Cut each leek in 2 or 3 and lay
these pieces down on a small white plate.
Pour 2 to 3 tbsp vinaigrette on
top.
Eat while it is slightly warm. Chew
well. Isn’t this divine?
(1) Many
American guests, afraid of losing the precious vitamins which they think reside
in any fruit or vegetable’s skin, will wonder. Why peel tomatoes? French
Cartesian chefs offer a host of bad reasons for so doing which have not
withstood any scientific test. My reason is only that it is more refined. I
peel these fragrant tomatoes because I find that feeling the skin on my tongue
intrudes on my immediate gustatory experience. If tomatoes are not good, I do
not care so much about peeling them.
(2) If
you prepare a simple fennel salad, without potatoes, you should forego the
vinaigrette for a mix of lemon and mustard. Isn’t life amazingly complex?
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