On Sallets: Salads and such

Food historians say the Romans ate mixed greens and dressing, and the Babylonians were known to have dressed greens with oil and vinegar two thousand years ago. In his 1699 book, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets (salads), John Evelyn apparently attempted with little success to encourage his fellow Britons to eat salad greens. He writes: "we are by Sallet to understand a particular composition of certain Crude and fresh Herbs, such as usually are, or may safely be eaten with some Acetous Juice, Oyl, Salt, &c. to give them a grateful Gust and Vehicle."

Unlike Britons, my family didn't need encouragement to eat salads. I grew up in a household where salad was part of dinner every night. At home, salads were always very simple: lettuce, tomatoes, onion, dressed with salt, good olive oil and vinegar. Maybe a few olives. All ingredients were excellent: fresh lettuce from local farms and amazing tomatoes. Salad tomatoes in Spain are not red and soft; they almost look like they're not completely ripe, but they are. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find tomatoes that look or taste as good here.

The incredible guy and I still eat salads pretty much every night. I almost feel like there's something missing if we don't. I have expanded my horizons, though, and have moved well beyond the standard ensalada that I grew up eating.

Ensalada Mixta:
But I still love simple Spanish ensaladas, especially the very classic "mixta" with potatoes, hard boiled egg, and usually, also canned tuna. I skip the tuna. I don't eat fish from a can; it's against my religion. Ensalada mixta at my house includes: lettuce, tomato, boiled potato, hard boiled eggs, sweet onion (like Vidalia) green olives and roasted red peppers, preferably piquillos. Although not from Spain, Price Chopper now sells piquillo peppers as part of their Central Market brand, so take advantage of them. They're not as good as the original, but perfectly acceptable. The piquillo pepper is a variety of pepper traditionally grown in Northern Spain, especially in Lodosa, Navarra. Its name is derived from the Spanish for "little beak." They're small and have intense flavor. I love them, especially stuffed. We'll talk more about peppers some other time, though.

Anyway, ensalada mixta:
bed of chopped good lettuce, 1 sliced large tomato, 1 sliced, boiled, large potato (put potatoes in cool water - never drop potatoes in boiling water because the outside will get hard; bring to a boil and cook for about 20 minutes or until a knife goes easily through the potato), 1 sliced hard boiled egg, thinly sliced Vidalia or other sweet onion, about a quarter of a large onion, sliced red roasted peppers (about 1/4 cup), green olives (I like the non pitted manzanilla, locally you can find them in the Hispanic food isle at the Price Chopper on Central Ave). You can add canned tuna, and if you do, please use good quality canned tuna. The Coop - surprise! - carries great Spanish canned tuna, Ortiz. Don't use chicken of the sea. Who the hell picked that name, anyway?
It's also traditional to add white asparagus. I don't usually add them because the incredible guy doesn't like white asparagus. So, toss everything with 2 parts of good olive oil, 1 part vinegar (try Sherry vinegar, you can find it pretty much anywhere these days but the Coop has the real deal from Spain.) Red or white vinegar will also work, but don't use balsamic for this. Add salt. I always dress salads to taste
(By the way, you should be listening to these guys while reading. Paul Simonon, I bow to you, sir.)

Turkish Delight:
Another salad that I absolutely love is Çoban Salatası, Turkish shepherd's salad, which I first tried when I went to Istanbul, Turkey in 1996, at the House of Medusa restaurant. Istanbul is an amazing city, truly East meets West. We stayed in the Sultanahmet district, in the heart of historic old Istanbul, very close to Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarayi, the Sunken Palace) and the Blue Mosque. I fell in love with the place, although unfortunately the people I was traveling with were not very nice. But it didn't spoil my fun.

One of the most shocking memories I have is entering the Istanbul Spice Bazaar, the Mısır Çarşısı, or Egyptian Bazaar. It was named that way because most spices were imported from Egypt. Talk about a shock (a great one!) to your olfactory glands. It's like all the spices in the world just punched you in the face. It was deliciously confusing!

But I digress. The way I make Çoban Salatası: dice one seeded large tomato, in very small cubes. Peel (unless you're using an English cuke) and cube a cucumber, in small pieces to match the tomato. Dice a green pepper (like a cubanelle or Italian green pepper, or half of a green bell), or if you're a heat-freak like me, dice a couple of jalapeños or a poblano. Jalapeño will give you more heat, or a lot of heat if you don't rib and seed it. Add diced red onion, about 1/3 cup, and toss it all together with the juice of one lemon, 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil (I like to spell it out, not like this moron, can you believe it?) and salt. Sprinkle fresh chopped parsley on it. Very refreshing if you chill it for a little while, but not too long or the flavors will dissipate.

BANCHAN!
Never ending source of delicious salad inspiration, banchan are small dishes of food served along with cooked rice in Korean cuisine. The most famous banchan is kimchi. I like kimchi so much that I have literally made myself sick eating it in copious quantities.
Some favorites that I make all the time are: oh ee mu chim (cucumber salad), ho bak na mul (zucchini salad), kong na mool moo chim (soy bean sprout salad), moo saeng chae (cold daikon radish salad) and si gm chi na mool (spinach salad).Check out this wonderful website, under recipes/vegetables, for recipes of all these incredible, and incredibly easy salads. You will need sesame oil for 99% of these recipes, so go get some.

Good Morning Vietnam:
Thanks to the wonderful people of Vietnam, I learned to make nuoc cham, or Vietnamese dipping sauce, which uses nuoc mam (fish sauce) as its main ingredient. Any salad ingredient tossed with nuoc cham is absolutely delicious. Don't be scared of fish sauce, it doesn't taste fishy at all. I don't like fishy flavors (remember my distaste for canned fish?) It's salty goodness and can be found in Asian grocery stores. It does smell a bit funky, I won't lie to you. If you don't do fish, you could substitute with low sodium soy sauce, but it won't taste the same.

To make 2 cups of nuoc cham you will need: 5 tb sugar, 3 tb warm water, 1/3 cup fish sauce (nuoc mam), 1/2 cup lime juice (about 3 limes), 1 large clove garlic, crushed or grated with a microplane (if you don't have a microplane, I recommend you get one, very handy little tool); 1 or more bird's eye or Thai chilies, seeded, and sliced or minced. Or, for a shortcut, I use 1 tb of sambal (Indonesian chili sauce, the stuff I could drink). Mix everything together in a bowl and whisk together until the sugar has disolved. For best results, let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

Nuoc cham is the dressing for Vietnamese noodle salads, with bun (rice vermicelli) as the main ingredient. Commonly, green lettuce, thinly sliced cucumber, shredded carrot, cooked rice vermicelli, chopped cilantro, thai basil and mint, chopped peanuts, topped with grilled pork. Out of this world, and amazing for a warm weather dinner.  The Daily Loaf has a great entry and recipe for bun salad.

Liquid salad: It's getting hot out there. Must be time for gazpacho! Gazpacho, a cold, pureed vegetable soup, it's your ultimate liquid salad. It's a great option for a hot night. I make gallons of it in the summer. You have to use very, very ripe tomatoes, the softer the better. Do NOT use canned tomatoes.

Authentic gazpacho is simple. It's also the main course in one of my favorite movies. I have seen several salsa-like aberrations in the area, including (sorry, but true) the Coop's version. No tabasco, no cilantro, like I said, nothing that makes it resemble something you're supposed to dip a tortilla chip in. It's not supposed to be chunky, either.

The way mama makes gazpacho is by chopping all the vegetables, blending them with a hand held mixer and then passing everything through a food mill to ensure a smooth consistency. I understand food mills are not very common here. That's the model I have, in the picture. Different Drummer's Kitchen has them, but you could always just throw everything in a blender or food processor. If you do, I would recommend peeling the tomatoes first. To peel tomatoes, boil a large pot of water, make a cross-shaped cut on the bottom and top of each tomato, and dunk in the water for a minute, or until the peel starts pulling away, then dump them in ice water to cool.

Gazpacho recipe: 2 pounds very ripe tomatoes (beefsteak or similar), 1 cubanelle or Italian green pepper - you can find these at the grocery store, by the hot peppers - or half of a bell pepper, half a red bell pepper, 1 cucumber (peeled and seeded, especially if you don't have a food mill), half a sweet or Vidalia onion, or less, depending how much you like onion, 1 cup cubed stale baguette or Italian bread, 1-2 cloves of garlic, to taste, 1/3 cup olive oil, 3 tb sherry or red wine vinegar, or more to taste, 1tsp salt, or to taste... I also like to add 1/2 tsp of smoked paprika. Not traditional, but it gives it amazing flavor. Blend it all together with a hand held blender and then sieve it through a food mill (ideally), or blend it in a food processor until smooth. If it's too thick you can add cold water. Chill for 1 hour. Serve with diced tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion and cubed day old French or Italian bread. If you use fresh bread it will fall apart. Eat it.

"La ensalada requiere: un pródigo para el aceite, un avaro para el vinagre, un prudente para la sal y un tonto para menearla."
(Salad requires: a generous man for the oil, a miser for vinegar, a prudent man for the salt and a stupid man to toss it) Old Spanish proverb.
Laister arte!