Sweet onions have become a bit of a cliché, but they certainly have their charms when used right. This is one dish where they work well. By giving the onions a quick soak but otherwise not cooking them, you moderate their already mild bite while still preserving every bit of their crispness.
6 SERVINGS
1 |
large sweet onion (about ¾ pound) |
1½ |
pounds avocados (2–3) |
|
Fresh lemon juice |
¼ |
cup olive oil |
|
Salt |
2 |
tablespoons snipped fresh chives, plus more for garnish |
1 |
pound medium shrimp, cooked and peeled |
Cut the onion lengthwise into quarters, then cut each quarter lengthwise into halves or thirds. Cut each of these sections in half crosswise. Place the onion pieces in a bowl of cold water to soak for at least 10 minutes.
Cut the avocados in half, remove the pits and with a spoon scoop out the flesh in one piece. Cut the flesh into pieces roughly the same size as the onions.
In a large bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, the olive oil, salt and chives. Drain the onions and pat them dry with paper towels. Add the onions to the dressing and stir to coat well. Remove the onions with a slotted spoon, draining any excess dressing back into the bowl, and arrange them on a platter in a broad layer.
Add the avocados to the leftover dressing and stir to coat well. Remove them with a slotted spoon and arrange them in an oblong mound on top of the onions, centering the mound so the onions show around the edge.
Add the shrimp to the leftover dressing. Add a squirt of lemon juice and a little more salt to taste. Stir to coat well. Arrange the shrimp on top of the avocados and garnish with snipped chives. Serve.
“Composed salad”: the very name is enough to kill your appetite, evoking visions of white-gloved matrons sitting around after bridge eating canned sliced peaches artfully arranged over slivered iceberg lettuce and decorated with cream cheese rosettes. In the minds of most people, composed salads are antiques from the old-fashioned school of cooking that was concerned more with the way dishes looked than how they tasted. After all, why arrange all those ingredients so carefully if you’re just going to toss them together at the table?
But let’s not be too hasty to poke fun. There’s nothing wrong with composed salads that a bit of updating won’t cure. Like much of classical cuisine, when composed salads are stripped to their barest components, there is good, sensible food behind the stilted prettiness. In fact, among better cooks, the decoration has never been the dish’s main virtue. In that bible of old-fashioned French cooking, the Larousse Gastronomique, the term salades composées is translated as “combination salads” (as opposed to “simple salads”), emphasizing the mix of raw and cooked ingredients rather than their artistic arrangement. Escoffier went one step further, speaking out forcefully against the overdecoration of the dish. “The increased appetizing look resulting therefrom is small compared with the loss in the taste of the preparation,” he wrote in The Escoffier Cookbook. “The simplest form of serving is the best, and fancifulness should not be indulged in.”
So forget about separating the meat, vegetables and greens into little decorative piles. Arrange them in a more modern, naturalistic way, and you have something delicious that is also beautiful without being contrived. Even better, you have dinner. Because when you get right down to it, a composed salad is the perfect meal for a hot summer night. Take a small portion of fish, meat or cheese and arrange it on a colorful bed of vegetables, greens and herbs. Bind the whole thing together with a bold dressing of some sort. What could be better?
Actually, you’re probably already making composed salads right now without even realizing it. Ever slice ripe tomatoes and dripping-fresh mozzarella, decorate them with dark green fresh basil and then serve the dish with good olive oil and a loaf of crusty bread? Is there a better—or prettier—dinner on a sweltering weeknight? That’s a very basic example. How about tossing together canned white beans and tuna, a little olive oil and lemon juice and some sharp bites of chopped red onion? Or what about thinly sliced steak and room-temperature steamed potatoes, bound together with a mustardy vinaigrette?
Whereas “composed” may once have referred to how the salad was arranged (preferably in as static and staid a way as possible), now it has more to do with flavor and the interplay of taste and texture. Although presentation is still important, the fashion today is for salads that look like food rather than a painstakingly arranged still life.
What may be even more impressive than appearance is the way these salads adapt to what you already have in the pantry and refrigerator. Canned white or garbanzo beans, tuna and smoked salmon; leftover grilled chicken or steak and the vegetables from a big Sunday dinner. All you need is some sturdy greens, a good dressing and a few condiments, and you’re in business.
Since these salads are served at room temperature, it’s best to use meat that is fairly lean. So remove the skin from the chicken. Or if you’re using beef, flank steak is a good choice. Lately, with more and more groceries stocking meat cut as it is in Mexico, you can also find very thinly sliced sheets of skirt steak—the kind that’s usually used for carne asada.
Through the summer, try to keep at least one head of watercress, frisée, radicchio or curly endive in the crisper. These greens have the strength—in both structure and flavor—to match up to almost anything you can throw in the bowl.
Make sure the meat and all the vegetables are cut into bite-size pieces, preferably of a similar size. These salads are about balanced combinations of flavors; don’t let any one ingredient dominate.
The dressing is the unifying factor in a composed salad. For lighter combinations, such as tuna and garbanzo beans, a simple mixture of olive oil and lemon juice is all that’s needed to point up the flavors. As the ingredients get heavier and bolder, so should the dressing. Adding a little Dijon mustard and some minced shallots to that vinaigrette will make a nice accompaniment to a salad made with grilled beef. Flavored mayonnaise is always good. Start with either homemade or a good commercial brand (Best Foods, sold as Hellmann’s on the East Coast, is the perennial first choice). Then add minced herbs, pureed roasted peppers or whatever else strikes your fancy. Even the best of the prepared mayonnaises will benefit from the addition of a little acidity: lemon juice or a vinegar of some sort.
Whichever dressing you choose, use just enough to season the salad and give it cohesiveness, but don’t overdo it. When you taste the salad, the main flavor should be the ingredients, not the dressing. And a good salad should never be gloppy. A rule of thumb is to add half the dressing and toss well, then add the rest a tablespoon at a time. Remember, you can always pass more dressing at the table.
Also remember that if you’re using starchy ingredients—beans, rice or potatoes, for example—they’ll absorb the flavors better if you mix them with a little bit of dressing while they’re still hot.