If food were poetry, subs would be limericks, sushi a haiku and salad a sonnet — 14 lines of freshness and exquisite flavor. An antidote to winter sludge. A rainbow of colors and often a surprise:
Where else do sweet onions and strawberries, avocados and oranges so happily marry?
When are salads more welcome than in spring?
What could be more nourishing?
The word salad derives from “salat,” meaning salt. Romans ate greens doused with salted oil. They still do. In fact, some form of salad appears in almost every cuisine, worldwide.
Too bad Browning and Keats, Shakespeare and Donne wasted the 14-line format on love.
By way of correction, embrace these:
- Lettuce, the backbone of most salads, must be the best. In the 1980s, a mix of fancy baby greens (including mezuma, radicchio and arugula) gained traction as mesclun, available only at fancy greengrocers. No more. Bagged gourmet greens have become a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide, with North America swallowing the largest segment.
- However, cut and bagged lettuce, although convenient, loses flavor. Base a spring salad on the freshest curly red and green lettuces, velvety butter (Bibb), perhaps some baby romaine purchased individually. Serious salad folk separate and wash leaves, spread in a single layer on a terry towel, roll loosely, slip into a plastic bag, refrigerate.
- Don’t shun iceberg. Local garden iceberg available at farmers’ markets is heads above bitter supermarket specimens shipped from never-never land. Crisp and mild, fresh heads are an ode to spring.
- Shakespeare penned the phrase “salad days,” spoken by Cleopatra, meaning youthful exuberance coupled with inexperience. Tree-hugging vegetarians of the 1970s were called “salad heads.”
- A beautiful lettuce needs little gilding. Don’t weigh down soft leaves with too much chunky stuff — a practice slammed as salad bar-ring. Instead, compose ingredients, as in lightly steamed slender green beans or asparagus strewn with goat cheese, in a romaine gondola, which fits nicely into banana split dishes.
- Do refrain from overwhelming tender greens with gloppy bottled dressings. Instead, keep on hand best-quality olive oil and a variety of vinegars including red and white wine, rice, raspberry, white balsamic, sherry. For an instant tangy/creamy dressing, thin mayo with pickle brine and a touch of sugar. Toss to coat leaves sparingly.
- Never underestimate the flavor-boosting power of fresh herbs. Buy an old-fashioned oval washtub, punch drainage holes in bottom. Fill with rich garden soil and young plants; several basil varieties, oregano, chives, marjoram, dill, parsley.
- Update classics: Start with potato salad made with unpeeled tiny new potatoes cooked al dente, sliced in half when cool, tossed with dressing and scads of snipped parsley, feathery dill (from that herb pot) and inner celery leaves.
- Go with the grain: Tabouleh made with bulgur wheat, quinoa, barley, corn, beans, rice add heft to summer salads.
- Fire and Ice, Performance Art: Master constructing a Caesar the fine-dining way — at the table, in a big wooden bowl rubbed with a cut garlic clove (plus more, pressed), with freshly grated Parmesan, torn romaine, the works except for the raw egg. (Substitute a tablespoon of mayo in dressing, maybe a squirt of anchovy paste.) Arrange salad on plates, not in bowls. Grill a thick sirloin steak over coals until medium-rare. Place thin slices of steak on top (or to the side) of salad. The aroma — heavenly. Works well with skewered jumbo shrimp.
- Fire and Ice, Encore: Pan-seared crabcakes on thick, ripe beefsteak tomato slices. Spicy chicken strips on peppery arugula. Mini pork tenderloin kabobs on tangy, not sweet, homemade cole slaw.
- Invent your own signature salad: Hard boiled eggs, crisp bacon and quartered roma tomatoes tossed with inner romaine leaves. Even better: baby spinach mingled with sliced white mushrooms, purple onion, whole (don’t cut or they will bleed onto mushrooms) tiny ripe strawberries. For dressing, whisk “light” olive oil with lemon juice and heavy syrup from canned peaches.
- Voila! In France — and authentic French bistros worldwide — a salad of soft lettuce filmed with fruity olive oil is served between the entrée and dessert to “clear” the palate. An impressive touch, stateside, when composed of inner Bibb (Boston) leaves arranged like rose petals in a small glass bowl.
- Bread completes a salad course … or meal. Choose wisely. Crusty or lightly toasted French or Italian is perfect for absorbing the last drops of garlicky Caesar dressing. A rye or grainy loaf compliments strong-flavored ingredients. Temper a spinach salad with warm biscuits. Cornbread a must with anything Mexican. Or, line an oven-proof bowl with a flour tortilla and toast in oven until the tortilla is crisp. Cool, add salad, serve immediately.
- Granted, proper salad preparation requires the best ingredients and some handiwork. To encourage frequent consumption throughout the summer, fill a shallow refrigerator container with sliced cucumber and radishes, chopped scallions and multi-colored peppers, olives, cheese cubes, halved cherry tomatoes each in a separate pile, ready to add to torn or shredded lettuce.
Because if dance is poetry in motion, salad is a sonnet on a plate.
April 26, 2021 at 08:09PM
https://ift.tt/3euWf20
A Sonnet to Salad | Features | thepilot.com - Southern Pines Pilot
https://ift.tt/3ekeW79
salad
No comments:
Post a Comment