chop *all* the things
Jun. 7th, 2014 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksIt has gotten to be the time of year where my first food thought is salad.
This was not always how things worked, with me. For many years I thought that I hated salad. Certainly I never ordered it anywhere, and I actively hid from it at potlucks and cookouts. I would eat it when it was made at home, with a feeling of being deeply virtuous and also vaguely penitent. It turns out that I was wrong. I do not hate salad.
I hate salad greens.
Iceberg lettuce mostly tastes like nothing in particular to me, although there was an incident many years ago where I put lemon juice into a meringue before baking it (note: NEVER DO THIS) and the end result tasted distinctly and strongly of lettuce, to the point where I realized not only that iceberg lettuce has always had a very faint flavor but also that I have always disliked it. Cranking it up did not help anything. We took those meringues around to people and got two reactions: "Oh my God! It tastes like lettuce!" followed by "Wait, lettuce has a taste!", and then we threw the rest out.
What is referred to as 'spring mix'-- escarole, endive, and the like-- is, since I am a supertaster, a palette of bitter on top of bitter with a side of bitter. I can handle Romaine, but it's dull. And I actively like spinach, but it's so much work, because even when you've only just bought it half the bag has gone mushy, so you have to pick it over to get those bits out, and then you have to wash it, and then you have to get the water out of it again somehow, and then if you're me you like it twice as much if it's been stemmed, and by this point you have been standing over one half-pound bag of spinach for forty-five minutes questioning your life choices.
My epiphany about salad was that it does not have to have greens, and when it does not have greens, it comes down to one simple question: what is there in the house that I can chop?
Because there is bound to be something. Just about any vegetable, blanched or raw. Nuts. Fruit. Boil some eggs, chop those. I don't do it myself, but I am told people chop toast and call it croutons. Dice some cheese. I have never encountered cold rice salad in the wild, but there is an Elizabeth David recipe for it in the house, so someone at some point somewhere did that.
And you don't have to have very much of any one thing, either. The word here is 'garnish', or possibly 'accent'. Tonight we had a salad of sliced cold boiled potatoes and hardboiled eggs. I covered it in a pesto made of the last handful of fresh basil before it went off, and about half a bunch of parsley, and a small fistful of the grated Parmigiana that's been lurking forever, and the maybe five cashews left over in the bottom of the bag after somebody ate the almonds, and the final smidge of cream cheese from Ruth's birthday cheesecake, and some olive oil. Topped with one halved cherry tomato, each, and three capers per person. What I am saying here is I boiled some potatoes and tidied the odds and ends from the fridge and the vegetable area, and it was very good. Because what else are you going to do with five cashews, a smidge of cream cheese, and two cherry tomatoes? Salad. This is, I have discovered, the point of salad.
Just about anything will go in some combination of oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, and mayonnaise as a dressing. I use very, very little mayonnaise ever, just enough to help emulsify. Veggies like more mustard than fruit does. A fruit dressing should get the juices left over from chopping the fruit thrown into it, and more vinegar and less oil. Avocado, apple, and clementine count as either fruits or vegetables.
I haven't done it yet, but I'm considering boiling a huge pot of potatoes and eggs and, like, beets and maybe some celeriac and sweet potato, and then keeping all the boiled things for salad, because the most annoying bit about wanting a salad of cold boiled whatever is getting it cooled off again after you've boiled it. Also, days when the stove does not get turned on at all are nice.
In conclusion, it also turns out that just about everything that isn't salad greens lasts longer than salad greens do before going off, so there's that too. Salad. If you eat at my house anytime this summer, there are even odds that that's what you're getting. Because there is always something to chop.
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comments over there.
This was not always how things worked, with me. For many years I thought that I hated salad. Certainly I never ordered it anywhere, and I actively hid from it at potlucks and cookouts. I would eat it when it was made at home, with a feeling of being deeply virtuous and also vaguely penitent. It turns out that I was wrong. I do not hate salad.
I hate salad greens.
Iceberg lettuce mostly tastes like nothing in particular to me, although there was an incident many years ago where I put lemon juice into a meringue before baking it (note: NEVER DO THIS) and the end result tasted distinctly and strongly of lettuce, to the point where I realized not only that iceberg lettuce has always had a very faint flavor but also that I have always disliked it. Cranking it up did not help anything. We took those meringues around to people and got two reactions: "Oh my God! It tastes like lettuce!" followed by "Wait, lettuce has a taste!", and then we threw the rest out.
What is referred to as 'spring mix'-- escarole, endive, and the like-- is, since I am a supertaster, a palette of bitter on top of bitter with a side of bitter. I can handle Romaine, but it's dull. And I actively like spinach, but it's so much work, because even when you've only just bought it half the bag has gone mushy, so you have to pick it over to get those bits out, and then you have to wash it, and then you have to get the water out of it again somehow, and then if you're me you like it twice as much if it's been stemmed, and by this point you have been standing over one half-pound bag of spinach for forty-five minutes questioning your life choices.
My epiphany about salad was that it does not have to have greens, and when it does not have greens, it comes down to one simple question: what is there in the house that I can chop?
Because there is bound to be something. Just about any vegetable, blanched or raw. Nuts. Fruit. Boil some eggs, chop those. I don't do it myself, but I am told people chop toast and call it croutons. Dice some cheese. I have never encountered cold rice salad in the wild, but there is an Elizabeth David recipe for it in the house, so someone at some point somewhere did that.
And you don't have to have very much of any one thing, either. The word here is 'garnish', or possibly 'accent'. Tonight we had a salad of sliced cold boiled potatoes and hardboiled eggs. I covered it in a pesto made of the last handful of fresh basil before it went off, and about half a bunch of parsley, and a small fistful of the grated Parmigiana that's been lurking forever, and the maybe five cashews left over in the bottom of the bag after somebody ate the almonds, and the final smidge of cream cheese from Ruth's birthday cheesecake, and some olive oil. Topped with one halved cherry tomato, each, and three capers per person. What I am saying here is I boiled some potatoes and tidied the odds and ends from the fridge and the vegetable area, and it was very good. Because what else are you going to do with five cashews, a smidge of cream cheese, and two cherry tomatoes? Salad. This is, I have discovered, the point of salad.
Just about anything will go in some combination of oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, and mayonnaise as a dressing. I use very, very little mayonnaise ever, just enough to help emulsify. Veggies like more mustard than fruit does. A fruit dressing should get the juices left over from chopping the fruit thrown into it, and more vinegar and less oil. Avocado, apple, and clementine count as either fruits or vegetables.
I haven't done it yet, but I'm considering boiling a huge pot of potatoes and eggs and, like, beets and maybe some celeriac and sweet potato, and then keeping all the boiled things for salad, because the most annoying bit about wanting a salad of cold boiled whatever is getting it cooled off again after you've boiled it. Also, days when the stove does not get turned on at all are nice.
In conclusion, it also turns out that just about everything that isn't salad greens lasts longer than salad greens do before going off, so there's that too. Salad. If you eat at my house anytime this summer, there are even odds that that's what you're getting. Because there is always something to chop.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
