Last night I dreamt I ate a salad. This tells me I'm not eating enough greens. I only dream about food if I'm craving something and salads aren't high enough in my preferred food chain to desire in real life. However, my body is much smarter than my brain so it's clearly feeling a deficiency. I love (and eat) legumes and vegetables, far more than salads, but the crisper is bare, mocking all pretense of a well rounded diet.
When Hubby is home, I'm pretty good about including leafy greens and vegetables (for his health as much mine) in our diet. When he is gone, as he is currently, I find myself reverting to bachelor behavior: whatever's easiest to make is what I'm going to eat. My friend Greg asked me a few days ago if I continue to cook and eat well when Hubby is not home; I said yes. It's not a quite firm yes; there are caveats. I don't eat junk food (actually, the last time I ate McDonalds, I called up Dani sobbing uncontrollably because I had deliberately used food to fill an emotional void, which, as she pointed out, is a perfectly American norm), but I'm not fulfilling the requirements of the third layer of the Food Pyramid, either.
Last night, my concession to green would have been nori seaweed, because I was planning to make spicy tuna hand rolls (sans cucumber). As it happened, Jamie didn't have any tuna so my second choice dinner was steak tartare (you see the pattern here, right? Least amount of work? Food so raw it makes Roxanne Klein’s cooking seem overdone?). I suppose you could count the onions as a vegetable.
A few years ago, I had a dinner guest who had never eaten anything but iceberg lettuce. When I brought salad plates out, she stared suspiciously at the greens and asked “What are these?”
“Baby romaine,” I said.
“These aren’t from a tree are they? You aren’t trying to trick me, are you?” Yes, that’s what I do: I make food for giraffes and trick people into eating it.
Salads have come a long way since the days of iceberg lettuce. I think I’ve eaten iceberg maybe 3 or 4 times in my life. That’s because Mom came from a culture which emphasized raw, crisp greens (thank God), so we grew up eating Romaine, Bibb, Boston, radicchio, endives and the like. My friend Julie recalls that the first time she ever ate dinner at my house, Mom made a Boston lettuce salad – Julie was enthralled. Upon returning home to her parents’ house, she asked them, “Have you ever heard of this? Have you ever eaten it?” They hadn’t, but after eating a salad she made from those ingredients, they became – and still are – converts.
In 1986 when I was living in the south of France, my aunt took me to the grocery store and introduced me to Salade Minute. It was a novel concept: pre-washed, packaged salad. Earthbound Farms, one of the largest organic produce companies in the States, introduced the salad-in-a-bag in select U.S. markets in 1986, but the concept really didn’t take off until the early 1990s. Alice Waters is one of the acknowledged trailblazers for organic, local foods at a time when most Americans had forgotten what non-canned peaches tasted like. It was she, at the famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley, who popularized mesclun. Mesclun originates from the South of France and includes very young leaves of endive, dandelion, arugula, mache (also known as “lamb’s lettuce,” and I’ve heard it referred to as “lamb’s tongue”), oak leaf, radicchio, chervil, frisee, sorrel and other distinctive wild plants. It’s the same stuff I ate in 1986, except produced domestically. It’s known as a spring salad mix in most stores (mesclun sound too similar to a popular drug?). At the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, I always get edible flowers with the mix, which makes for one of the most gorgeous salad plates imaginable.
Even here in the gastronomic hinterlands I can find mesclun and frisee and baby arugula, although I invariably find myself answering questions at the checkout counter like, “What is this? What do you do with it?” (The only time I’ve never had to answer either question was when I bought hotdogs and buns and sauerkraut for a Fourth of July party at a friend’s house. Mistaken food identity happens a lot to me. On one occasion, the older woman at the checkout counter picked up my ginger root and checked her produce list. She rang it up as garlic. Another time, the checkout kid picked up my kiwis and beamed, “Limes, right?” Sure kid, if I wanted moldy brown and fuzzy limes.)
My favorite way to eat mesclun is with fresh raspberries and gorgonzola cheese with about 3-4 tablespoons of raspberry vinaigrette. I’m a big believer in less is more with vinaigrettes. Just toss the mesclun into a bowl, drizzle with vinaigrette and use your hands to mix well. Serve salad on a chilled plate, top with raspberries and crumbled sweet gorgonzola.
I like Belgian endives chopped and served with hearts of palm, tossed in a homemade Ranch-style dressing. It’s sharp, distinct, bitter, and smooth, all at once. Some chopped hardboiled eggs really add to the flavor.
Insalata Florentine, was served at my wedding. The wedding caterer liked the recipe (which came to me by way of Peggy & Sunil, who brought the recipe back from Florence) so much he’s now included it in menus for prospective brides and grooms. Cut 1 zucchini and 1 yellow crookneck squash into thin strips or julienne using a mandoline. Pat dry with towels (you don’t want wet squash). Toss with 2 T white truffle oil, fresh ground pepper and freshly grated Parmigiano. Add more Parmigiano or pepper to taste (don’t salt: the cheese will provide enough of that flavor).
Baby arugula tossed with olive oil, a few spritzes of fresh lemon juice and fresh ground pepper is about as perfect as you can get. I like this salad best just before pizza, or a pasta meal with heavy red sauces like Bolognese.
In all cases, I don’t add vinaigrettes or dressings to the salads until I’m ready to serve. Wilted salads just don’t do much for me. I know it seems obvious, but I’ve eaten more than my share of soaked, wet, darkened greens that bear no resemblance to a lettuce. I don’t think anyone should wince when they’re eating salad.
Unless it’s iceberg lettuce.
Comments