Salads

In the Mediterranean countries salads are a mixture of a few raw vegetables, with lettuce predominating, flavoured with oil, vinegar, and salt. And it is difficult to find a better way to complement almost any dinner than by such a simple green salad, preferably served after the main dish, when coolness and crispness and a bit of acidity bring lightness and refreshment.

Crisp but delicate leaves provide the central theme in green salads, so the first requirement is to make sure you have good "leaves". A tight head of lettuce can provide crispness but not much more, so the effort should be to mix in at least some of the more loosely grown leaves of lettuce or some endive or chicory. Oil and vinegar dressing will complete the salad, or you may add celery, cucumber, fennel, green onion, parsley, shallots, chives, green peppers, radishes, and even a little crisp raw carrot if you like.

Tomatoes are really not at their best in this mixture and they tend to kill the other flavours. If you want a tomato salad make it mainly tomatoes. Raw cabbage can be added in desperation if other crisp ingredients are in short supply, but cabbage belongs in a cabbage salad and not in a mixed green salad where, like cauliflower, it confuses the flavours. Leftover peas are an addition of dubious merit.

The dressing for whatever version of green salad you make should not drown or destroy the texture and flavour of the vegetables unless these are so ancient as to have lost their own flavour, which means that all fancy and most bottled dressings are out. Recipes for simple French dressing are given in the Recipes section.

You may, if you know what you are doing, forgo delicate flavours in your salad and seek more strident tones. You may just hanker for the flavour of Roquefort or anchovy or decide that the nuances of plain fresh vegetables will not carry to alcohol-numbed taste buds at a party. The addition of such powerhouse items should be a deliberate choice for a particular situation.

In Scandinavia "salads" are also cold, they have oily dressings, and the ingredients are mainly derived from the vegetable kingdom, but that is the end of the resemblance to the classic salad. The base is usually boiled potatoes or cooked macaroni, leftover boiled vegetables or fish are commonly added, and the whole is solidly bound together with heavy mayonnaise. This is a good way to pack lots of calories into small space in a form that keeps for days, yet may be eaten at a moment's notice. Unless you are a mountain climber or a stevedore, such salads are best used as main dishes with some added bits of salty or pickled fish to counter the cloying effect of so much starch and oil (see Recipes). Salads of this northern European type, lightened by generous additions of celery, carrot, onion, or cucumber, make a welcome change from potatoes for dinner. Strips of pimento and rings of green pepper add flavour contrasts and fine colour.

Fruit Salads

Fruits, admirable as they are, do not prepare the palate and stomach for food to come. A fruit "cocktail" or any other sweet and flowery food, has none of the appetizer property of alcoholic or shellfish cocktails that derive their virtue, in fact, from being removed as far as possible from that end of the gastronomic spectrum. Grapefruit is perhaps the best fruit to serve as a "salad" at the start of a meal, but it does not really prepare the way for meat and vegetables. In any case, no cherry on top, please, lest someone make the mistake of eating it. Even a trace of imitation maraschino flavour plays havoc with a sensitive palate, and pineapple is almost as bad. Such flavours are useful to write "finis" to a meal.

California invented the fruit salad, which was intended in fact to be a salad. It is really much better in its British translation eaten as a sweet. From California also came the salad meal. We suspect that a main appeal of the salad meal is the ill-founded belief that it is singularly healthful and won't make you fat. A meal of salad can have those properties, but when it contains half a pound of Blue cheese and a teacupful of mayonnaise it is low neither in calories nor in fat.

An excellent low-calorie meal can be provided by a cup of soup and a fruit "salad" such as pear with cottage cheese. You can even add dates or raisins and chopped nuts if that is your fancy (not ours!) and a small bit of sharp cheese is permissible, but don't ruin the idea by pouring great quantities of salad dressing over the whole.

Other Salads

Fish and crayfish and lobsters, crabs and prawns made up as salads are a delightful world in themselves. Eschew the all- t oocommon custom of drowning them with oily dressings and eat all you want as main dishes. It is a rare meal that merits a big shellfish salad and a meat co urse. But a small shrimp salad is an excellent start for a meal; a little crab or shrimp goes a long way. Fish or shellfish in aspic or clear gelatin, or blended in gelatin to make a mousse, makes wonderful hot-weather salads. Chicken, too, is good this way (see Recipes).