Salads, green salads, tossed salad or lettuce salad, are for the most part, about eating raw plants. Mostly leaves if I may quote a hero. Before putting all this in the spinner, allow me to digress.
The other night I was listening to a panel discussion on the radio. The subject was a chemical whose name was BPA. This substance is not a food additive, but a constituent in the plastics and epoxy coatings used in food packaging. The problem was to what degree this substance was leaching into the packaged foods. I listened and later googled BPA. Absolutely terrifying. Please conduct your own investigation about it. I won’t say to much more about it except this;
Why must so much of our food be packaged so that it lasts for 50 years? I don’t think that’s what food is. As a stabile non-decaying ‘thing’ maximum profitability is insured. I don’t think that’s what food is. To take a fish or a head of lettuce or a peach and get it from the sea or the farm to you, still fresh, is a formidable endeavor. To facilitate this process by turning that fish or fruit into ‘not food’ is good business they tell me. Turning it into slow acting poison is treason, I’m telling you. The purpose of food is to nourish ourselves. When the purpose of food becomes generating maximum profit on an industrial scale we, folks, suffer miserably. And so goes the nation.
The most vital avenue of protest we possess is how we spend our dollar. ‘Spress yo self’. Reduce your intake of packaged foods. Figure it out. Slowly slowly, eliminate those things that were, one way or another made ‘safe’ so that the food conglomerate packaging and shipping should not ’suffer’ inventory losses. I don’t think that’s what food is. Okay, I’m done and this brings us right back to salad.
Salad might come before an entrée like an appetizer. It could come after an entrée like a chaser. It can come with an entrée like a green vegetable or it can come as an entrée when your digestive tract howls it does not need or want another 6 or 8 ounces of animal flesh. Where is it written that dinner is not dinner without that centrally located slab’o meat?
There are a few issues about salad that need be tackled. Let’s begin.
There are a few different kinds of lettuce out there. Each has it’s own particular charm and may or may not appeal to you. Try them all, who knows.
Iceberg lettuce is that sphere-oid lettuce that I would say is most common. It has no flavor at all. There is nothing wrong with it, nor is there anything good about except this; once you get a few leaves in, you don’t have to wash it. It is clean on the inside. It’s nice shredded and fluffy on sandwiches and good in a mixed lettuce salad where other lettuces or vegetables might give the whole salad character.
Romaine lettuce is the one with long straight leaves. It is what is typically used for Cesar salad. I consider it a kind of sweet lettuce. Cesar is or should be a strong flavor dressing so the mild Romaine lettuce works nicely. Romaine is a fairly dirty lettuce so it must be cleaned effectively.
Different types of lettuce are more or less dirty or gritty or sandy than other types. What type of soil is it grown in? How close to the ground? In what sort of weather? The open leaves of most lettuce provide a catch all for air born soil. So, you have to wash lettuce. More on that later. I think it good to be reminded that these things come from the ground, the soil. They are plants that grow on farms. Sobering, really.
Red and Green Leaf are soft and sweet. The green has a little more crunch than the red and will last longer in the fridge than the red. Both make a great salad.
Spinach comes in a few different ways. The large dark crinkely leaf is mature spinach. It is very sandy and you might have to do the wash process 2 or 3 times. It is flavorful and high in nutrition. The smaller lighter green leaf is baby spinach. It often comes ‘pre-washed’ in cellophane bags. The older I get the more this scares me. I can’t help thinking that this packaging thing provides me some preservative that I don’t want or need? Should I worry about it? Who nowadays could call me paranoid?
Watercress is getting different now. It has a very peppery flavor and lots of crunch. It does not hide behind a dressing. It too spresses it’s self. It grows in water so you won’t get sand but you may find a bug so give it the once over. If you buy 1 head, you will get a few salads from it. You would not want a salad exclusively of watercress. Maybe you would.
Arugala is a very high character-flavor lettuce. It has a flavor all it’s own. Some folks like it and some folks don’t, period. A salad of just arugala would be mighty intense. Less so mixed with another less intense lettuce. Say, half iceberg / half arugala. Buy it when it’s beautiful and calls out to you. Use it up in one shot. It deteriorates quickly. Green to yellow to black.
Chickory and Escarole I think of as old fashion lettuce. They are pretty bitter and very crunchy. The chickory is the frilly one so it makes a mixed salad fluffy. I like bitter lettuce. That’s me. One Halloween
I donned a head of chickory for a costume. Most effective. I don’t recall eating it later or not.
Raddichio is that little red letuce which could be mistook for red cabbage. It is bitter but so pretty. Just a few leaves shredded up gets a salad that ooo-ah response. It is an expensive lil’ lettuce but you use little and it has a pretty good shelf life in your fridge.
Endive is a funny thing. It looks like a little yellowish rocket or a biggish chrysalis. It is very bitter but very delicious and refreshing. The thing about endive is once the leaves are removed they start turning black so you need to time their addition to just before serve or give them a lemon juice/water bath which will delay their oxidizing, just like apples or avocado.
Frisee is very pretty and expensive. It is a light green and very frilly. Save this for your in-laws.
Dandelion actually is dandelion, that pretty yellow weed flower. Though you might use it as just another salad green, it has a resume of medicinal powers that might let you live forever. You won’t find it in just any supermarket but it’s really worth finding and indulging in once in awhile.
Mesclun is that mix of baby lettuces that you buy by the pound from a box. A lot of folks like it. It’s okay. My problem with it is it flattens out a lot once you dress it.
That’s enough about the world of lettuce. There are more I have not covered or just have no experience
with. Should I find one, I buy first and ask questions later.
Cleaning lettuce is critical to the enjoyment of salads. Nobody wants a mouthful of planting fields from a forkful of salad. Holding a head of lettuce or any green or leafy vegetable under cold running water only gets it wet. Now it’s dirty and wet. Congratulations.
You might want to invest in a salad spinner. It is a cheap plastic centrifuge that throws the water off wet lettuce. You can get them easily. There are different types but don’t spend too much because they always break and then you just tossem’ and get another. The thing about spinners is you need to store them with the top OFF or you get this scary black mold on the inside which can’t be good for you. I think it’s the same as bathroom mold. Looks the same to me.
Clean only as much lettuce as you will eat at that meal. It lasts longer attached to it’s stem. You might want to measure in the bowl or bowls you will serve in. Pick off and chuck the bad leaves and remove the little fringes that may have blacked or gone soft. Then tear the leaves into fork sized pieces.
Use the outer bowl of the spinner or a big mixing bowl or a large pot. Fill it with cold water in the sink and leave it in the sink. Throw the picked over lettuce in the water and agitate. The sand and grit held in the lettuce is now sinking to the bottom. Now, lift the lettuce by hand and move it to the strainer part of the spinner. If you pour it all into the strainer you will have succeeded in putting all the sand back on top. Congratulations. Once you have removed the lettuce from the bowl, look at the sand at the bottom of the bowl. SEE?
Then you spin it and it’s pretty dry. Clean dry lettuce-5 minutes.
If you put the remaining unpicked whole lettuce back in a plastic bag, back in the fridge, put a damp paper towel in there. You have about 2 or 3 days on that lettuce before you will want to toss it. Don’t toss it. Eat it. It’s good for you.,
Now comes the list of things that you can put on a salad;
First, raw vegetable things; Tomatoes, onions, peppers, sliced carrot, radishes, sprouts ( big variety), cucumbers, broccoli or cauliflower florets, thin sliced celery, string beans or pea pod peas, jicama and of course the ever popular: etc. The best thing is to buy and eat what’s beautiful and seasonal. When those big pink radishes start talking to me, you bet I listen.
Then there are the other things, not raw vegies that go on salads. Croutons, olives, nuts, sliced apples or pears. I like shredded cheese and I love crumbled feta. Contrary to the outset of this piece, there are things in cans that can go on a salad. Chick peas, tuna fish, dolmas, anchovy, baby corn, and the ever popular: etc.
Then, there’s the left overs. A piece of salmon or some shredded chicken or turkey makes a salad lunch or dinner, maybe. Maybe some pasta or rice. I think there’s a lot one can do with cold rice in salads. First, don’t call it cold rice.
Get the picture? Green salads mostly get better the more stuff you throw in them. The only time they don’t belong is breakfast and dessert.
Did you ever see this film about a guy who commits to eating only McFastfood for some extended period of time and nearly dies of it? In the resolution of the movie his nutritionist girlfriend puts him on a restorative cleansing diet and guess what’s top of the cleansing list, hmmmmmm? Radishes, yep, radishes.
We are evolved or, unevolved to eat plants. Not cheetohs and not carbonated sugar water. I’m not asking for exclusivity or vegetarianism. I’m looking for balance and repair. Let’s talk dressing, salad dressing.
To begin simply, excluding just plain, nothing, would be oil and vinegar. This is the time when you want really good virgin olive oil. Just a few drops from a bottle that probably has a reduced opening. Add to that a few drops of good flavorful vinegar. There are so many available now so find one or three that you like. I like a balsamic vinegar and some find it too too. Sherry vinegar works well here and some like those exotic fruity vinegars. All good. A squeeze of lemon or lime juice works well as well. A shake of salt and a turn of pepper and you are good to go.
Next up is vinegarette. This is a premixed combination of oil and vinegar plus flavor stuff and sometimes a little something to bind them all together. The vinegar being heavier than oil will separate and fall requiring you to shake it before putting it on your salad.
There must be forty feet of salad dressing in any supermarket. Some are good and some are dreadful. All sugar and corn starch and stabilizers and who knows what. If you look at the labels, you’ll know what. Please don’t adulterate a beautiful fresh salad with bottled dressing that might be used for making improvised explosives.
The easiest way to make vinegarette is in the blender. You could do it in a bowl with a whisk or in one of those mini food processors. You could do it in a container with a tight fitting lid but you will have to fine chop a glove of garlic IF you wanted garlic in your dressing.
Different people and dare I say it, ethnicities have a range of preference for acidity/vinegar. Us types from northern climes more so thus the presence of pickling a.k.a. acidity preservation. The warmer climate cuisines do not depend on vinegar as much.
Going back now. One’s preference for acidity for whatever reason, will determine the ratio of oil to vinegar. In school they told me 3 to 1 / oil to vinegar. I think that’s about right but what I think is not very important. 1 to 1 can be right and 8 to 1 can be right. What is important is the progression and this might be writ in stone.
The last thing that goes into a well made vinegarette is the oil and slowly slowly while you are whisking or blending. Don’t measure. This ain’t rocket science. Use fingers. Pour vinegar into the blender to the depth of a finger or 2 fingers, depending on how much you are making. Add to this a little salt and pepper and a tiny amount of some mustard. Blend or whisk this for a lil’ bit and taste it. Yes it’s rough without the oil but here and now you can decide if you need more salt. The salt won’t dissolve into the oil later. After your adjustment, pour oil in slowly slowly with the blender running or while you whisk. This is why the tops of blenders have that extra cap on top-to pour stuff in safe and neat while the thing is running. You are looking to bring the total volume of liquid to about 3-4-5 fingers, again, dependent on you taste.
This is a simple vinegarette. Most would not argue but there’s always one, really a few.
Now starting over or the next time you can throw the kitchen sink at it. If you look carefully at some bottled dressings, you will see lil’ bits of vegetables floating around in there. Carrot, onion, garlic, red pepper and the ever popular: etc. can be added, in small amounts to the just vinegar so far stage and be blended in instead of chopping. You can add a little sugar or a few drops of worstestestershire. Maybe some capers or an anchovy if you have them on hand. Blend this all up and add your oil slowly as before. Now , you got yourself some fancy pants vinegarette.
Next step and some of you might find this revolting. Go back to the pre-oil step. Go heavier on the anchovy mustard and garlic and add the juice of a lemon and, AND, 2 egg yolks - no whites. Don’t do this if you can’t remember when you bought the eggs. Blend this until the ’emulsion’ turns from a brighter yellow to a paler one. Add a little parmesan cheese to this and then the oil, slowly slowly. Stop adding oil when it starts behaving like a liquid again, You’ll learn. With the inclusion of the eggs, you now have an emulsion, a.k.a. fortified mayonaisse, a.a.k.a. Cesar dressing. Use it up when you make it and throw it out-raw eggs are considered dangerous and I don’t want you should kill some body you like. This process with the eggs, a lil’mustard and salt and pepper is mayonaisse. Now you know.
One more and then I‘m done. Food processor or bowl or blender, drop a lump of blue a.k.a bleu cheese. Saga or Maytag or Danish is fine. I don’t gots to be Gorganzola or Rocheforte. Add to that a healthy splash of butter milk, a pinch of cayenne or chili powder and a dash of worstershiererer and the juice of ½ a lime. Blend that a bit but it’s going to stay sort of a lump. Now add a couple of big spoons of Hellman’s mayo and somewhat less an amount of sour cream. For salad dressing, you might want to add more buttermilk to loosen it up or for a dip, keep it thick. Either way, this is the best bleu cheese whatever ever. This will last safely for weeks if, it lasts that long. Oh, don’t use the rind from the cheese and when you trim it off, wear gloves and work on wax paper. This can get a bit smelly.
What is a balanced diet? When we say balanced, I think the mind goes to a balance scale, one side and another. This is not an accurate picture. The balanced diet is more circular, like a plate spinning on a stick. One must balance a few important groups in both proportion and frequency. It’s tough. It’s a big shift for many of us, a societal shift. Raw vegetables and leafy stuff is a really big deal. Adding or increasing this so called rabbit food to our complex diets is critical. Everybody knows it.
Whoever amongst us says they want another burger, probably needs a salad. Maybe 2.
Comments