Dine: Championing the salad
| 23 February 2010
S.M. King discovers a super way to crank up your interest in salads over summer.
Remarkably often, the food we love as kids is the food we love in sulkier adult moments. Nothing soothes the spirit so much as the fare of our youth. I was raised in the US, just below the Mason-Dixon Line, so in my case the cuisine that comforts my mood often angers my gastrointestinal tract.
Ever heard of a jalapeno popper? This battered, deep-fried, cheese-filled chilli is guaranteed to make you seven kinds of ill. But, damnit, like so many traditional American snacks, it feeds my base desires.
I began taking Partner to see my American family a few years back. Whenever we visit, which isn’t often enough, she makes one of the culinary discoveries I’d enjoyed in childhood. There was the clam chowder served in a bowl of bread; the five-layer dip; the perversion known as a “s’more”. A little like the high-sucrose version of a jalapeno popper, this campfire treat requires that you sandwich marshmallow and chocolate between graham crackers and melt. With chocolate on her frock and marshmallow through her hair, Partner looked at me after eating one for the first time and hissed, “Why didn't you ever tell me about this?”
After accusing me of keeping my snack intelligence a state secret, she will generally demand that I cook her new American food favourite until she decides she’s gotten fat. However, there’s one non-fatty item I’m required to prepare without pause. It’s the American staple, the Chef’s Salad.
It’s only been in recent years we Australians have embraced the gussied up salad. Thanks to Asian influence, dishes like yum neur, or Thai beef salad, have become commonplace. A meal with a leafy green base is not only nutritious but the perfect rejoinder to a hot summer day. We are, however, yet to embrace the rather wonderful American iteration of the salad-as-a-meal.
Any US establishment that merits the title “diner” will have its own take on the repast. For nearly a century, Americans have been enjoying their greens with a liberal accompaniment of cold cuts, dairy goods and dressing. Oftentimes, a Chef’s Salad feels like nothing more than an excuse to scoff an entire flock of poultry and enough cheese to build a life-size replica of a ten-year-old. But you can go easy on the dressing and build something tasty that won’t see you attached to a defibrillator.
The key to a satisfying salad is a variety of textures and the right combination of cooked and raw ingredients. For example, roasted cubes of sweet potato served cold add a fulfilling cooked dimension to a meal and a counterpoint to the crunchiness of raw veg.
For further inspiration, it can be useful to give your Chef’s Salad a national theme. You can go Mexican and, essentially, unpack a taco in a bowl or you can employ Indian influences. Lentils, a yoghurt dressing and a little chicken tikka served with broken pappadams in the place of the traditional crouton has become a favourite at our joint.
But, as ever, the best place to look for inspiration is the season.
At this very minute the markets are filled with the makings of the world’s greatest salad. Beans of all stripes, avocadoes and zucchini flower are all in season. The delicate crunch of late spring can still be savoured in sugar snap peas. And don’t overlook the simple radish. It’s far more refined than its appearance as a garnish in Women’s Weekly cookbooks might suggest.
Now, I just need to uphold my salad skills for a few further months. Just until we travel to America next, when Partner, with her head emerging from a shoofly pie or barbecue pork ribs, will say “Why didn't you ever tell me about this?”
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