chop *all* the things

[rushthatspeaks]

It 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.

Comments

[kaberett]

Iceberg: from my perspective the point isn't at all the flavour but the texture (though I also actively like the flavour, which I recognise many people do not, but hey, many people like watermelon, SO I think we're quits).

I really, REALLY like drained chopped tinned artichoke. And, yep, definitely getting to "... put things in bowl, call it salad" weather here too :-)

[genarti]

That's my father's perspective too, for iceberg lettuce. "But it tastes like nothing!!" say my mother and I. "But it's crunchy!" says he. (And he grew up in the 40s and 50s, so he has nostalgic midcentury-cookery fondness for it too, I think.)

[loligo]

I'm considering boiling a huge pot of potatoes and eggs and, like, beets and maybe some celeriac and sweet potato

Vibrantly pink potato-beet salad (known as "rasols") was a required element at every party my grandmother ever threw.

[nextian]

Amen! I didn't like salad one bit until I lived in an apartment with someone who had the sense to look at it this way; now I think it's God's gift to the recipient of a produce box. And it's delicious.

[rinue]

This is very close to my own feelings about salad and about salad greens and about spinach. And, although it isn't mentioned, about a similar approach to soup-making in winter.

[yhlee]

!

You are a genius.

All of my salad attempts have failed because I assumed that greens were the necessary part. I am the only one in the household who will touch the greens (hating them all the while) until I get sick of them, and then the rest of the bag goes bad because no one will help me finish the damn things, and I throw it out, and I give up until the next attempt several months later, wash rinse repeat.

I must try it your way sometime.

[(Anonymous)]

My approach to salad is hereby revolutionized.

[skygiants]

YES THIS. I'm so bored by lettuce! But so happy with a big bowl full of chopped things! And it's only been in the past few years of cooking for myself that I've understood this, and understanding it has revolutionized the way I cook in summer.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't hate salad. I eventually worked this out, oh, four or five years ago: what I hate, with a passion, are salad dressings. Oil or vinegar will spoil almost any eating experience for me; mayo in small amounts. What I do like is sour cream and garlic dips and greek yoghurt, and ever since I started using those on greens and calling it 'salad' I've liked it much better. Or, y'know, just plain greenery as a side.

The memories of the saladFromHell (wilted green lettuce with vinegar) my 9yo self was served on an 'eat it all or miss the super-duper-daytrip-of-awesome' basis (I escaped through the kitchen, half an hour later, after staring at it and being unable to touch it) have not faded yet. I don't know whether I hated salad before that point; I definitely hated it afterwards.

[redbird]

I do like salad greens, but my favorite salad as part of a meal is still cucumber salad: our nearby sushi place does one that's just cucumbers, oil, vinegar, and sesame seeds; if I'm making one for myself it's likely to be cucumber, scallion, and then either oil or yogurt, vinegar, dill, and maybe another herb or too.

[kore]

I do love greens, but this is great.

[genarti]

Agreed!

I love a lot of things that are bitter with a side of bitter (or sour with a side of sour), and I love most greens that aren't iceberg. But the discovery that a salad could contain whatever I felt like tossing into it was a glorious one.

(Me, I am coming to the time of year when my first thought is "make a pile of chopped vegetables, toss a fried egg on top of it!")

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who once said, when served a salad at my house, "This is so good! I'm not very good at salads." And I blurted, in my maximally tactful way, "Do you miss the bowl?" Because this is how I make salads: I throw vegetables at the bowl. My friend is an otherwise intelligent person. I don't really understand how she can not be good at salads.

Most days I have some kind of cauliflower-broccoli-cherry tomato salad (often with pistachios and sweet bell peppers, but not always) at lunch.

Lately sometimes a beet and peanut salad with spicy Thai peanut dressing.

Basil tomato salads are also good. Basil is a salad green! If you eat enough basil it is a vegetable, and that is how you can tell it is enough basil: if it is enough to count as a serving of veg, that is probably enough.

My problem is that if I just eat piles of cold veg, I get cold and sad and scrinchy from not enough energy (this egg and cheese thing would help if I did it), but I think, "I know! a salad!" and then do not think of anything else I can eat. And that makes nobody happy. But the salads are still good; this is not the fault of the salads.

I suspect that this summer the answer is going to be "poach an egg! eat your salad and then poach an egg!" Because "poach an egg" has been the answer to everything food-related except for the question, "What food-related thing shall I tell rysmiel about?"

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Have you tried "Poach an egg and then break it over your salad!" or is that just me, that I like an egg over things? Almost any things?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I often have poached eggs over salads.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have! It is definitely not just you. Poached egg on roasted beets! Poached egg on roasted potatoes! Poached egg on fried green eggplants! Poached egg on pasta primavera*! All the poached eggs! Poached eggs have kept me out of the hospital this year, because food is difficult enough that I keep not being able to eat it, but one of the things I mostly can eat is a poached egg, and sometimes that brings along the things under it.

*This pasta primavera was in a restaurant that was actually paying attention to the word "primavera" and not just treating it as nonsense syllables. So it had pea sprouts and really fresh lovely peas and other early spring veg. So good. When it arrived, I looked at it and then, before breaking the white so the yolk would spill, I carefully scooched the egg over so that it was only over part of the pasta and just ate that. Then I took the leftovers home and poached more eggs for each section of them. I am a Mris of very little eating at the best of times and these are not the best of times (see above re: kept out of hospital), so I got three meals out of it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hunh. The care and forethought implied by the egg-scooching delights me (people should think more about their food, including how much of it they're likely actually to want), but the very-little-eating thing does not. I could wish you better health. Indeed, I do.

[sovay]

a huge pot of potatoes and eggs and, like, beets and maybe some celeriac and sweet potato

I strongly support the increased presence of celeriac on a handy low-key basis. That stuff is delicious.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

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?

YES EXACTLY!! I was very happy when I realized this, too.

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.

Yes, or at least the day's choices. (I could have been --ing, but instead I am doing THIS)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice. If there's a salad bar, that's exactly what I choose: no greens. I can't chop things without bloodshed, so lately I've been living on spring mix and scrambled eggs. Maybe I should learn to poach.*

Nine

*Which is how one gets transported to the colonies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Poaching is dead easy! It really is! I bet you can learn it no problem!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I have never regretted learning to poach. It has always been worth looking both ways out the window for the egg wardens. But honestly, if you have a pot to heat water in and a slotted spoon to take the egg out you can poach an egg; I can show you if you'd like.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I'd like that. Thank you!

Nine

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The only real trick to a poached egg is a fresh egg. The fresher the better. Then just break it into simmering water, simmer for three minutes, remove with a slotted spoon. Dry on paper towels, and serve. Or eat.

(If it's stale, you'll know it, for the white will spread all through your water in a distressing fashion. When they're fresh, they cohere around the yolk; when they're older, they don't. There is nothing you can do about this; no technique will affect it.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You can drain the raw egg in a small strainer to get rid of most of that or just not worry about it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The not-worrying is mostly what I do, if I'm only poaching for myself; if there are others, I'm only poaching if I know the eggs are fresh.

But if a third option ever arises - well, now I know what to do. Which I would not have thought of. Thank you!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! My husband is currently into ramen, and so we found the Serious Eats article on poaching eggs which is where that tip is.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Last month, Hiranu and I were traveling in the outer wilds of Maryland. We stopped at a supermarket, where he went to the salad bar and filled a plastic container with things-other-than-greens. The clerk at checkout actually challenged him, saying, "That's not a salad!" I was furious at her, because I read it as fat-shaming. Hiranu thought it was an innocent joke and I shouldn't have yelled at her.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have never encountered cold rice salad in the wild

Gosh, really? The rice salad is an absolute staple in the UK. Which may be why I do not love it, for I'm not sure I have ever met a good one.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Wild rice salad, on the other hand, is a thing of great beauty I never see outside Minnesota, because we have the wild rice here and other people...don't. (They mix it in with other rice. Guh what?) Wild rice salad! Wild rice, peapods, cashews, chicken or tofu depending on your inclination! Dressing!

...I am now wondering how to modify the dressing such that a poached egg would best enhance this.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I love egg on rice. All manner of rice. Wild rice is mostly sold in the UK mixed it with other rices, and it never seemed to me to work. Perhaps I should have explored more with the pure article. Perhaps I shall...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If you get pure wild rice and you bake it with enough broth to cook it, and also basil and garlic and almonds and mushrooms, the result is Quite Nice.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

This post has made me both very happy and possessed of a desire to wildly applaud.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

The fancy local grocery store (Byerly's/Lund's) has wild rice salad in the deli case, and it is delicious. They have one that is wild rice with cashews, chicken, (maybe celery) in a creamy sauce, and another that's wild rice with butternut squash and dried cranberries.

You do have to like the taste/texture of wild rice, which apparently some people (Matt) don't???

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Celeriac and beets make a great slaw, with a mostly mustard but a little mayo dressing.

I'm so with you about hating lettuce. I've enjoyed finding out things that I do like, and having them in salads. Chaz makes fabulous salads, including starting with broccoli cut into strips, so the the flowers still have the little flowering bits but are separated. He also chops up nice bacon to put in them, too.