My mother made me eat a salad a day, and I’ve tried to stick to that. You might be a salad person, too, but if not you probably will be after diving into this chapter, which includes lots of green, raw, and cooked vegetable salads as well as those based on beans, grains, and pasta. I used to say salads were hard to define, but actually it’s easy: any dish that combines fruits, vegetables, or greens and then dresses them in a delicious, slightly acidic sauce. How’s that?
Perhaps even more than with most other dishes, the best salads start with the best ingredients, especially since they’re often served raw. And it’s tough to beat a few slices of fresh-from-the-garden tomato drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt. But unless you’re a fanatic — or a home gardener — you’re going to have to compromise if you want to eat salads every day all year long. Fortunately, even at a salad’s most basic level, you can take ordinary supermarket ingredients — iceberg lettuce or cabbage, packaged carrots and celery, a few radishes — and with the help of a little extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice or decent vinegar, turn them into something delicious.
The Basics of Making Salad
The simple green salad is just that, but because it has so few ingredients, there’s a noticeable difference between good and great. You should, of course, have some delicious olive oil on hand — it’s easy enough to come by — as well as decent vinegar or a couple of lemons. However, lettuce should be more than the vehicle for these fine ingredients. On the contrary, the best salads work the other way around: The greens are the star.
The quality of greens in supermarkets has grown tremendously, even since this book was first published. Ditto the options, which is a wonderful thing, because even a little salad of Boston and romaine lettuces, for example, is considerably better than one of either alone. In many ways, the more greens, the merrier; that’s why boxes of greens, mixed together, are so popular. (Well, also because they’ve virtually done away with washing.)
Salad Greens
There are hundreds of edible greens, each with its own personality, from hot mustard greens to sweet chard to bitter radicchio to spicy arugula. And then of course there are lettuces. The fact that now you can buy mixes of these, prewashed and even precut, makes building a “green” salad easier than ever before (although that’s no reason to buy the bagged salad kits that contain dressings and all).
While in many instances I find myself buying mixtures of greens, it’s still worth understanding the differences among various lettuces and greens. Here’s a quick primer.
Lettuces
There are four basic types:
- A light-green ball of crisp, super-moist, but not especially flavorful, leaves
- Long, crunchy leaves, still moist but with some bitterness
- Soft but well-defined heads with tender, very slightly bitter leaves
- The biggest category of lettuces and the ones that tend to be the most bitter
Using Romaine and Boston lettuces are fine by themselves, though better in mixes because they’re so mild. Iceberg needs even more help, though it’s good in combination with other vegetables as in Chopped Salad (page 36), or broken into big wedges and used as a vehicle to show off Blue Cheese Dressing (page 674) or the like. Loose-leaf lettuce varies so much in taste and quality that it’s hard to generalize, but note that chopped up lettuce can also be thrown into soups and stir-fries.
Chicory and Endive
The flavor, texture, color, and versatility of this huge group of greens (which includes radicchio, Belgian endive, curly endive, escarole, frisée, and more obscure greens like Treviso radicchio) is unmatched.
They are all forms of chicory: sharp, crunchy vegetables that vary wildly in appearance but less so in taste and texture. Tight-headed bright red radicchio; long, leafy radicchio (also called curly endive); lettuce-looking, thick-ribbed escarole; the smooth oval Belgian endive; and lacy, frilly frisée all feature a stark bitterness that is readily tamed by cooking or smoothed by olive oil. All are bitter, most are super-crunchy, some are very expensive. (Yet if you can tell the difference with your eyes closed between $5 per pound radicchio and $1 per pound escarole, you have a better palate than I.)
Using Other than endive and frisée, these are almost too bitter to use alone in salads but are great mixed with other greens. Belgian endive can be served like celery, drizzled with olive oil or spread with cream cheese. All of these are delicious braised (for example, try using them in the recipe for Braised and Glazed Brussels Sprouts on page 183), stir-fried as described in Stir-Fried Vegetables (page 154), or brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and grilled (page 163).
Arugula, Watercress, and Dandelion
These greens are only distantly related, although all are dark green and intensely flavorful. Dandelion greens have the distinction of being among the most vitamin-packed foods on the planet. When young, it is mild flavored; when mature, it is the most bitter of greens. Arugula (also called rocket or rucola) has a distinctive hot flavor, an acquired taste for some. (Baby arugula, which has become more common, is much milder. A shame, really.) And super-peppery watercress — there are other cresses, too, and they’re similar — is unjustly used more as a garnish than as a food.
Traditionally these are best in spring and fall, but like almost everything else, they’re now available year-round.
Using Arugula is one of the best salad greens there is: Lightly dressed with oil and lemon juice, it’s a real treat. It is also tasty as a bed for grilled vegetables (especially when it wilts a little and absorbs some grilling juices) or in a salad with tomatoes. Watercress makes a fine addition to salads but is also good on sandwiches and in soups — cook with potatoes in broth or water, and purée to make a vichyssoiselike soup. Dandelions can be eaten in salads when young but quickly become too bitter to eat raw; they are then best steamed or stir-fried with soy sauce or garlic and lemon.
Salad Mixes (Mesclun)
Mesclun, from the Niçoise dialect for “mixture,” is a word originally used to describe a mixture of a dozen or more wild and cultivated greens, herbs, and edible flowers. Now it has come to mean any mix of greens.
Supermarket mesclun (which you are likely to see labeled “spring mix”) may not be as interesting as mesclun you make yourself (especially if you’re a gardener), but it’s undeniably easy to use. Now a year-round staple, sometimes available for as little as $4 or $5 a pound, already mixed mesclun is an incredible bargain when you consider that a pound of greens will serve a substantial side salad to at least six people and probably more like eight.
These mixes are often packaged in plastic, with a special process called Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) that keeps them fresh for a week or longer. (The same is true of other prepackaged salads.) Once opened, however — or if you buy your mesclun loose — use it within a couple of days before it starts to turn even the slightest bit funky.
All of these are prewashed, but I wash them anyway, and I recommend you do too.
The “Other” Greens
These are the leafy salad greens that don’t easily fall into any of the preceding categories. Some, like spinach (see page 248), are available everywhere in many forms. Some, like mizuna and tatsoi (a small-leafed member of the bok choy family), are traditional Asian greens now seen as more or less mainstream in America. Others, like mâche (lamb’s lettuce) and its relatives, are quite tender and fragile, with a small window of freshness. Still others are the leafy tops of root vegetables like beets, radishes, and turnips. When they’re young and tender these can make excellent salad greens, too.
If you frequent farmers’ markets or specialty grocers, you’ll run into all of these and more. I encourage you to experiment. Almost all may also be lightly cooked — steamed, boiled and shocked, or stir-fried — though when they’re young, fresh, and tender, the best way to eat them is raw.
Prepping and storing Salad Greens
Trimming For head and whole loose-leaf lettuces, first scoop or cut out the core. (If the head is tight, you’ll probably have to use a knife.) Trim away the outer round of leaves and any browned or wilted stems. Tear or cut leaves into smaller pieces, if you like, and rinse.
Rinsing Don’t skip this process even if the greens come in a bag labeled “prewashed.” It’s fast and easy and a worthwhile precaution. Put the greens into a salad spinner or in a colander inside a large pot or bowl. Fill the container with water and swirl the greens around. Now lift the salad spinner basket or colander out of the water. Shake out the water. Repeat as necessary until the water contains no traces of sand. Then spin the greens or pat them dry with towels.
Storing Washed, dried salad greens are good to have on hand and keep pretty well. If you have a salad spinner with a bowl, pour the water out after spinning and pop it in the fridge, greens and all. The remaining moisture and ventilated basket provide a good environment for keeping greens fresh for a couple of days or more. If you don’t have a salad spinner, line a plastic bag with clean kitchen or paper towels, put the washed greens inside (careful not to pack them too tightly), loosely close the top, and store in the refrigerator (in the crisper, if possible). Greens should always be kept in a cool part of the refrigerator, but not somewhere cold enough to freeze them.
Prepping Salad Greens
You can rinse salad greens up to a day or 2 in advance.
|
|
|
|
Step 1 Plunge greens into a salad spinner filled with water or a colander set in a large pot or bowl; swirl the greens around. Lift out the insert or colander and change the water, repeating as many times as necessary to remove all traces of grit. |
Step 2 If you have a salad spinner, spin the greens dry; otherwise, dry them in a towel. |
Step 3 Store, wrapped loosely in kitchen or paper towels, in a loosely closed plastic bag. |
Dressing and Serving Salads
Few dishes are as pretty as salads, as long as you don’t dress them too early or too heavily and end up with wilted greens. But there’s no law that says salad must be served in a large wooden bowl with a wooden fork and spoon. Here are some options.
Tossed Salad Most of the recipes here call for the leaves to be a manageable size, tossed in dressing. Individual preferences aside, as a general rule ½ cup dressing is about right to dress 4 cups dense vegetables, beans, or grains or 6 to 8 cups salad greens. Once the salad is tossed, you decide whether to divvy it up or serve it from one plate, platter, or bowl at the table.
Drizzled with Dressing Thick, chunky, or rich dressings don’t always work well for tossing, especially if the vegetables are tender, cooked, or left in large leaves, pieces, or slices. Simply arrange the salad and pour a couple of tablespoons dressing around the top. In cases where the dressing is thick enough to use a spoon, serve it on top or a little to the side of the greens. Think of it more as a dip.
The Wedge Retro, and still beloved. Whether you cut a neat pie-shaped slice from a head of iceberg or roughly break into the heart of a romaine, the lettuce must be crackling crisp. Then top it with a spoonful of dressing and maybe a sprinkle of something crunchy (see the sidebar above). This is the time to go for thick, creamy dressings like Blue Cheese (page 674).