Salads

Appears in

Published 2013

About

‘I cheerfully forget my debtors, but I’ll never pardon iceberg lettuce’. So wrote the late Ogden Nash, in Ogden Nash Food (Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1989). And while my sensibilities are not quite as affronted by the iceberg lettuce, he does have a point. I love those soft, floppy lettuces, pulled fresh from the garden. They might be less model-like than the iceberg, with its fixed grin and crisp edges. But the flavour is so much better.

A perfect green salad is high art indeed. The dressing must have just the right amount of acidity to cut through the green, but not so much that it puckers the tongue. Each leaf must be washed, then properly dried (buy a salad spinner) so that the dressing sticks. And the amount of dressing is key. Enough to caress, rather than smother the leaves. Four parts good oil to one of vinegar. And a decent whack of either smooth Dijon or English mustard. As to the vinegar, white wine is a good all-purpose choice, while sherry, red and rice have their own charms.