Let’s get one thing clear. I am not one of those salad girls.
You know that girl. The one who picks at lettuce leaves while the guys dig into their steaks. The one who skips dessert or will “have one little bite”. I am not her.
I say that because I feel a little defensive about salads. When people ask me — as they often ask food writers — what I cook for myself at home, I can see the wave of disappointment cross their faces. A salad? Not a dainty plate of leaves, I hastily add.
A big, satisfying salad full of cheese, nuts, seasonal vegetables and whatever’s languishing in the fridge.
They do not look convinced. So let me make my case.
First, as much as I would enjoy telling people that on an average Tuesday I come home at 8 and whip up some beef bourguignon, that’s just not true.
I eat out a lot for my job, and when I’m home, I want a light meal and I usually have small quantities of a hodgepodge of ingredients in the fridge.
Cooking elaborate meals requires planning, and in my life, planning happens only on weekends.
Secondly (this is another bubble-burster), I don’t want to cook for hours just for myself.
I like to cook, but the joy comes from planning the menu, shopping for the best ingredients and watching friends savour the food. If I’m alone, I like to be in and out of the kitchen in 30 minutes.
Not getting its due
And so I’m on a mini salad crusade. I’m tired of cooks — especially restaurant chefs — failing to give salads their due.
Often, menus offer skimpy green salads designed as punishment for dieters, or bucket-sized Caesars with so much fat that you might as well go ahead and order that burger.
Even the priciest salads often fail to impress. I can hardly remember the last time I saw something on a menu besides a cheese-and-tomato, a beet-and-goat cheese or mixed greens. Salads deserve more.
So what makes a good dinner salad? Like any great dish, it calls for balance: of colour, sweetness, saltiness, crunch and a little bit of fat. (A really good dressing certainly helps.) And note what I didn’t say — lettuce.
You do not need a bed of greens to make a salad. A salad should be a plateful of things you want to eat, not a few good morsels tossed into a bowl of tasteless leaves.
I do use lettuces, but I favour romaine for crunch, radicchio and frisée for bitterness and mache rosettes for sweeter salads; like the one with peaches, goat cheese and candied pecans that was my favourite last summer.
I try not to buy the bagged, pre-washed kinds, which contain several types of leaves but yet have a monotonous, bland taste. My basic rule: If the lettuce doesn’t add flavour, leave it out.
Case in point: One of my favourite combinations is grilled shrimp with avocado, mango, red onion and cilantro.
It’s a salad I put together one night when I needed more ways to eat an unbelievably luscious variety of mangoes.
The dish has everything: protein, colour and a balance of creamy and sharp, bright flavours. (It also has enough fat — good fat — to make it satisfying.)
The dressing is a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Take that, Rachael Ray. This is dinner in five minutes.
Needn’t be raw
Of course, the colour and the particular sources of sweetness and saltiness depend on what you like and what’s available. (I tend to put fruit in everything but that might not suit your taste.)
And naturally, salad ingredients don’t have to be raw. Grilled chicken or steak, boiled potatoes, roasted pepper or pears and grilled asparagus are made for salads.
So are whole grains such as quinoa or bulgur wheat, which can help a salad feel more like a meal.
Use leftovers
You can prepare any of those quickly or use leftovers that might otherwise be thrown away.
Other pieces of advice: For protein, I use cheese but that’s mostly because I am lazy and it’s what I have on hand.
If I’m feeling fancy I use a poached egg, as I do in my bistro-inspired salad. For crunch, I use toasted nuts or croutons.
Homemade croutons are far better but I do buy the unflavoured ones to keep on hand. I buy enormous bags of pine nuts, walnuts and almonds and place them in the freezer.
A few minutes in the toaster oven and they’re ready to go.
Vinaigrettes ultimately
And after years of drizzling my salads with good olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I’ve come around to using vinaigrettes that add depth and complexity.
Simple ones that take less than ten minutes can be made in large quantities and can be stored for a few weeks in the fridge.
Right now, I have three dressings ready: pomegranate-hazelnut vinaigrette with shallots, cumin vinaigrette and Parmesan-lemon vinaigrette.
I also love buttermilk dressing but you have to use that one up more quickly.
I make salads all the year round. Spring and summer are easy, of course.
But it’s just as easy in the colder months. In autumn, I roast butternut squash with maple syrup and toss it with toasted hazelnuts, fresh goat cheese and baby spinach. (A seared scallop would be great too.)
Last year, my winter favourite was roasted carrots, white beans and grilled shrimp, a recipe I found in Nancy Silverton’s A Twist of the Wrist.
For almost every salad, a twist is about all it takes. Maybe I am a salad girl, after all.
