SPECIAL SALADS : THE MAGIC TRICK
We inherited salad from the French. It all began with tender greens topped with a light dressing of oil and vinegar. This basic theme got more and more elaborate, first with the addition of other raw and cooked vegetables, then fish, poultry, meats and cheeses. Today anything can, and does, go into a salad bowl. The dressings on the salad also became intricate with spices and herbs, condiments, exotic oils and vinegars. Now you hardly, if ever, see a simple salad recipe in a new cookbook or in a fashionable restaurant, yet simple salads and dressings have much to recommend even for festive meals. If I experiment with salads, I prefer the exotic ingredients in the main body but leave the dressing simple. TASTINGS Salad's ancestor It was the Romans some 2000 years ago who first introduced salads as they served tender greens with oil, vinegar and salt. These first salads remained simple and basic—no exotic ingredients, just the basic goodness of fresh greens with tasty oil and vinegar. Cuisines in warm climates avoid the raw-green salads that is common on tables of cooler climates. The tender, high-moisture greens are cool climate vegetables, that neither grow well nor hold fresh for very long in warm climates .
Also in tropical and subtropical climates, raw fruits and vegetables are often not safe to eat due to less hygienic growing conditions, contaminated irrigation and rinsing water and faster growth of microorganisms. In hot climates cooks prepare salads that use cooked or marinated ingredients and, less frequently, raw but peeled vegetables. For example, Indonesian gado-gado salad includes scalded cabbage, water spinach, (a local green-leaf plant), cooked potatoes, blanched green beans and stir-fried bean curd. All ingredients are combined with a cooked peanut dressing. Every ingredients is safe from contamination. Gado-gado is not what we traditionally call salad, but is served cold as a salad, and is perfectly safe to eat, even by weak-stomached Americans from the U.S. Midwest. And it is hearty enough to be a meal in itself. The ingredient of another hot climate example, Middl e-Eastern tabouli salad, is cooked bulgur wheat (cracked wheat grains) with a type of dressing that is very close to French vinaigrette. The acidity of the vinaigrette dressing creates a hostile environment to potential contamination. The only raw parts of this salad, parsley and mint, are ingredients in small quantities, not in amounts like lettuce and tomato in our salads. Even if the parsley and mint are not perfectly safe, the amount you eat is so minute that it is not likely to harm you. By normal definition a salad contains tossed greens or fruits. These ingredients are by far the easiest to prepare. Just cut up several kinds of fresh produce in any ratio, mix, apply prepared dressing and serve. It is hard to imagine a course easier to make, looks as nice and is so full of nutrition than one of these tossed salads. No wonder they are served so often. There is only one problem with these traditional salads. Served often, they tend to get monotonous to a discriminating eater. What makes a salad a salad? Salads consist of two parts. The body that can be any basic food, cooked or raw and the dressing (the fashionable term is sauce). The dressing is either applied just before serving or, if it is to marinate the ingredients, hours before. When you dress the salad just before serving, the dressing is meant to provide flavor and mouthfeel to the otherwise mild crunchy vegetables. If the dressing is a marinade, it can take several hours or several days to alter the flavors, textures and consistency of the foods that make up the salad. Ordinary tossed green lettuce salads are considered passé in today's food circles and better restaurants. The trend is to mix unusual combinations or exotic, wild, even unheard-of ingredients. The new rule is, if no deaths have been directly attributed to a plant material and it looks out of the ordinary, add it to the salad bowl. Anything edible, from tiny flowers to furry twigs, flavorful to bland, bitter to sweet, has been, or at this very moment is being tried. Vivid colors, curly shapes and wispy, twisted textures are all in demand. Some of the more established nouvelle cuisine ingredients include dried tomato, radicchio, chicory, fiddlehead ferns, all kinds of sprouts, arugula, mâche, dandelion, endive, sorrel, baby vegetables and baby greens, flowers and herbs. Combined with the basic salad fixings, these ingredients create beautiful and appetizing plates with minimal additional work for the cook. But how to find them and how much they are going to set you back at the checkout counter is another problem. They are certainly not for the everyday meal. Different Purpose—Different Ingredients The use for salads today actually goes far beyond the first course. We can break down today's salads into four general types.
ß Appetizer salads—this is a light first course designed to stimulate the appetite. The body of this type of salad is greens in combination with other vegetables or fruit. The dressing is also light and tart. A standard green salad with a light vinaigrette dressing is typical for this use. A fruit salad of tart fruits and a light, barely sweetened dressing is also appetite-stimulating. You may add a little seafood, since it isn't filling in small doses. Nuts and cheese are heavier and you should use them in small amounts. If you're disappointed in how your entrée turned out or there isn't enough to go around in generous servings, add more calorie-rich food to your appetizer salad to partially gratify, instead of just stimulate, the guests' appetites. You may also use a light salad as cleansing the palate, an old French tradition. In this case instead of a first course, offer it between two contrasting courses. The salad dressing literally cleanses the taste buds to prepare them for the next movement in your symphony of the meal. In this role, a salad should be especially light, usually nothing more than greens with a touch of dressing and a hint of pepper, and in minuscule portions to satisfy but a small bird's meal. ß Accompaniment salads—these can be heartier than appetizer salads since they accompany the main dish and complement its flavor as well as satisfy appetites. Marinated vegetables may also accompany the entrée and complement it. They go very well with a heavy, somewhat fatty meal. A sour marinade aids the digestion of oil and butter-rich foods. Remember how your stomach craves for pickle or sauerkraut to go with hamburger or a Rueben sandwich? A fruit compote is also a good example of an accompaniment salad. It goes well with poultry or pork. Gelatin and aspic salads, although much less popular today than they used to be, are perfect examples of accompaniment salads. With the generous amount of sugar and marshmallow that were so common in the 1950s and 1960s, they could do double duty on the menu—as salad and as dessert. But it is not fair to serve it as two different courses on the same meal. Some might notice it. ß Main dish salads—these hearty salads can, and often do, take the place of the entrée.
Main dish salads can include anything edible. Start off with simple tossed greens and just keep adding things. You traditionally serve these salads cold, but for improved flavor, serve them at room temperature. Some you may even serve warm. Many bean salads, for example, are best when served warm. ß Dessert salads—usually of sweet fruits or a mixture of sweet and tart fruits. Some cooks like to add gelatin for a firmer consistency. Sweetened whipped cream or toasted nuts are winning toppings. The expected presentation of dessert salads is chilled, even frozen, but their flavor is far improved if you allow them to warm up to room temperature. The dressing Salad dressings are usually mixtures of an oil and a sour liquid, either vinegar or citrus juice. The ratio of the two varies, depending on the cuisine and local and personal preference. The traditional French ratio is four or five parts oil to one part vinegar. If you intend to use the dressing as a marinade, the ratio is closer to one-to-one—much higher in acid since it is the acid that works in the role of marinade. Oil and vinegar don't intermingle with simple stirring like water and scotch do. When you add vinegar to oil, the heavier vinegar sinks to the bottom and forms an individual layer, resting snugly below the layer of lighter oil. When you shake the closed container vigorously, the oil breaks up into tiny, invisible droplets that disperse through the acidic liquid. The liquid turns cloudy because the oil droplets no longer let the light through freely. You've just created an emulsion, though this is only a temporary state. If you let the mixture sit for a few minutes, the oil and vinegar separate again. You can make the emulsion semi-permanent if you add a substance to slows the separation, or you can make it permanent if you add an emulsifying agent that prevents separation altogether.
The simple French vinaigrette is a temporary emulsion. Add some dry mustard and it becomes semi-permanent. Mayonnaise is a good example of a permanent emulsion. The mixed ingredients in mayonnaise don't separate out, no matter how long they sit. Egg yolks contain emulsifying agents that prevent separation. Some chemicals are also emulsifying agents that food processors add to bottled salad dressings and other similar mixes to prevent separation. These were all examples of cold dressings. Cooked dressings thicken with heat. They often also include eggs, and once cooked, they are permanently mixed. (These may not be emulsions as chemists define the term.) Oils Salad oils range from simple, inexpensive, flavorless vegetable oils to slightly more costly, more flavored olive oil, to more exotic peanut and sesame oils, extra virgin olive oil and highly flavored and pricey almond, grape seed, walnut or hazelnut oils. Processors can make oil from any grain, seed and nut if there are enough people to pay for them. You can jazz up any oil yourself by infusing it with any aromatic herb or spice, and change basic vegetable oil to, say, chili oil, thyme oil, fenugreek oil or cinnamon oil
Also in tropical and subtropical climates, raw fruits and vegetables are often not safe to eat due to less hygienic growing conditions, contaminated irrigation and rinsing water and faster growth of microorganisms. In hot climates cooks prepare salads that use cooked or marinated ingredients and, less frequently, raw but peeled vegetables. For example, Indonesian gado-gado salad includes scalded cabbage, water spinach, (a local green-leaf plant), cooked potatoes, blanched green beans and stir-fried bean curd. All ingredients are combined with a cooked peanut dressing. Every ingredients is safe from contamination. Gado-gado is not what we traditionally call salad, but is served cold as a salad, and is perfectly safe to eat, even by weak-stomached Americans from the U.S. Midwest. And it is hearty enough to be a meal in itself. The ingredient of another hot climate example, Middl e-Eastern tabouli salad, is cooked bulgur wheat (cracked wheat grains) with a type of dressing that is very close to French vinaigrette. The acidity of the vinaigrette dressing creates a hostile environment to potential contamination. The only raw parts of this salad, parsley and mint, are ingredients in small quantities, not in amounts like lettuce and tomato in our salads. Even if the parsley and mint are not perfectly safe, the amount you eat is so minute that it is not likely to harm you. By normal definition a salad contains tossed greens or fruits. These ingredients are by far the easiest to prepare. Just cut up several kinds of fresh produce in any ratio, mix, apply prepared dressing and serve. It is hard to imagine a course easier to make, looks as nice and is so full of nutrition than one of these tossed salads. No wonder they are served so often. There is only one problem with these traditional salads. Served often, they tend to get monotonous to a discriminating eater. What makes a salad a salad? Salads consist of two parts. The body that can be any basic food, cooked or raw and the dressing (the fashionable term is sauce). The dressing is either applied just before serving or, if it is to marinate the ingredients, hours before. When you dress the salad just before serving, the dressing is meant to provide flavor and mouthfeel to the otherwise mild crunchy vegetables. If the dressing is a marinade, it can take several hours or several days to alter the flavors, textures and consistency of the foods that make up the salad. Ordinary tossed green lettuce salads are considered passé in today's food circles and better restaurants. The trend is to mix unusual combinations or exotic, wild, even unheard-of ingredients. The new rule is, if no deaths have been directly attributed to a plant material and it looks out of the ordinary, add it to the salad bowl. Anything edible, from tiny flowers to furry twigs, flavorful to bland, bitter to sweet, has been, or at this very moment is being tried. Vivid colors, curly shapes and wispy, twisted textures are all in demand. Some of the more established nouvelle cuisine ingredients include dried tomato, radicchio, chicory, fiddlehead ferns, all kinds of sprouts, arugula, mâche, dandelion, endive, sorrel, baby vegetables and baby greens, flowers and herbs. Combined with the basic salad fixings, these ingredients create beautiful and appetizing plates with minimal additional work for the cook. But how to find them and how much they are going to set you back at the checkout counter is another problem. They are certainly not for the everyday meal. Different Purpose—Different Ingredients The use for salads today actually goes far beyond the first course. We can break down today's salads into four general types.
ß Appetizer salads—this is a light first course designed to stimulate the appetite. The body of this type of salad is greens in combination with other vegetables or fruit. The dressing is also light and tart. A standard green salad with a light vinaigrette dressing is typical for this use. A fruit salad of tart fruits and a light, barely sweetened dressing is also appetite-stimulating. You may add a little seafood, since it isn't filling in small doses. Nuts and cheese are heavier and you should use them in small amounts. If you're disappointed in how your entrée turned out or there isn't enough to go around in generous servings, add more calorie-rich food to your appetizer salad to partially gratify, instead of just stimulate, the guests' appetites. You may also use a light salad as cleansing the palate, an old French tradition. In this case instead of a first course, offer it between two contrasting courses. The salad dressing literally cleanses the taste buds to prepare them for the next movement in your symphony of the meal. In this role, a salad should be especially light, usually nothing more than greens with a touch of dressing and a hint of pepper, and in minuscule portions to satisfy but a small bird's meal. ß Accompaniment salads—these can be heartier than appetizer salads since they accompany the main dish and complement its flavor as well as satisfy appetites. Marinated vegetables may also accompany the entrée and complement it. They go very well with a heavy, somewhat fatty meal. A sour marinade aids the digestion of oil and butter-rich foods. Remember how your stomach craves for pickle or sauerkraut to go with hamburger or a Rueben sandwich? A fruit compote is also a good example of an accompaniment salad. It goes well with poultry or pork. Gelatin and aspic salads, although much less popular today than they used to be, are perfect examples of accompaniment salads. With the generous amount of sugar and marshmallow that were so common in the 1950s and 1960s, they could do double duty on the menu—as salad and as dessert. But it is not fair to serve it as two different courses on the same meal. Some might notice it. ß Main dish salads—these hearty salads can, and often do, take the place of the entrée.
Main dish salads can include anything edible. Start off with simple tossed greens and just keep adding things. You traditionally serve these salads cold, but for improved flavor, serve them at room temperature. Some you may even serve warm. Many bean salads, for example, are best when served warm. ß Dessert salads—usually of sweet fruits or a mixture of sweet and tart fruits. Some cooks like to add gelatin for a firmer consistency. Sweetened whipped cream or toasted nuts are winning toppings. The expected presentation of dessert salads is chilled, even frozen, but their flavor is far improved if you allow them to warm up to room temperature. The dressing Salad dressings are usually mixtures of an oil and a sour liquid, either vinegar or citrus juice. The ratio of the two varies, depending on the cuisine and local and personal preference. The traditional French ratio is four or five parts oil to one part vinegar. If you intend to use the dressing as a marinade, the ratio is closer to one-to-one—much higher in acid since it is the acid that works in the role of marinade. Oil and vinegar don't intermingle with simple stirring like water and scotch do. When you add vinegar to oil, the heavier vinegar sinks to the bottom and forms an individual layer, resting snugly below the layer of lighter oil. When you shake the closed container vigorously, the oil breaks up into tiny, invisible droplets that disperse through the acidic liquid. The liquid turns cloudy because the oil droplets no longer let the light through freely. You've just created an emulsion, though this is only a temporary state. If you let the mixture sit for a few minutes, the oil and vinegar separate again. You can make the emulsion semi-permanent if you add a substance to slows the separation, or you can make it permanent if you add an emulsifying agent that prevents separation altogether.
The simple French vinaigrette is a temporary emulsion. Add some dry mustard and it becomes semi-permanent. Mayonnaise is a good example of a permanent emulsion. The mixed ingredients in mayonnaise don't separate out, no matter how long they sit. Egg yolks contain emulsifying agents that prevent separation. Some chemicals are also emulsifying agents that food processors add to bottled salad dressings and other similar mixes to prevent separation. These were all examples of cold dressings. Cooked dressings thicken with heat. They often also include eggs, and once cooked, they are permanently mixed. (These may not be emulsions as chemists define the term.) Oils Salad oils range from simple, inexpensive, flavorless vegetable oils to slightly more costly, more flavored olive oil, to more exotic peanut and sesame oils, extra virgin olive oil and highly flavored and pricey almond, grape seed, walnut or hazelnut oils. Processors can make oil from any grain, seed and nut if there are enough people to pay for them. You can jazz up any oil yourself by infusing it with any aromatic herb or spice, and change basic vegetable oil to, say, chili oil, thyme oil, fenugreek oil or cinnamon oil