Salads

Looking at current restaurant menus in London, New York, or Sydney, I sometimes get the feeling that almost any dish can be a salad if the chef chooses to call it one. This is an illusion, of course – a salad is a salad, and the word refers to more or less the same kind of dish the world over. Its place and function in the meal, however, are somewhat different in Southeast Asia from what they are in the West. I don’t think it would ever occur to an Asian, if he or she had spent all their life in their home town, to serve a salad at the beginning of the meal, still less at the almost-end, just before the dessert. We don’t limit our salads to any particular role, any more than you would confine them to a few conventional ingredients. The salads in this section are especially suitable for starters, but you can equally well regard them, as we would in Asia, as snacks, one-dish meals or accompaniments to the main course. And they will always be important parts of any buffet.