Patricia Wells - Salad as a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season

WITH GRATITUDE TO ALL MY STUDENTS, WHO HAVE SUSTAINED AND INSPIRED
ME OVER THE YEARS: WE HAVE FORMED DEEP AND LASTING FRIENDSHIPS,
YOUVE KEPT ME ON MY TOES, AND YOU DO HELP ME STAY YOUNG.
THE TEACHER IS ALWAYS THE ONE WHO LEARNS THE MOST!

The original inspiration for this, my twelfth, book comes from the simple, old-fashioned menu at Brasserie Lipp on Pariss Left Bank. In big, bold red letters at the top of the French menu it proclaims in clear English: no salad as a meal.

The folks at Lipp are simply trying to prevent the ladies who lunch from considering a simple tossed green salad a meal. But how times change. Today, with heightened concern about nutrition as well as the great wealth of choice in what we eatultra-fresh seasonal produce, an ever-growing variety of greens, sparkling fish and shellfish, all manner of cheeses, oils, vinegars, nuts, and seedsI find that at home (if not at Lipp) we are more likely to fashion a salad as an entire meal. That ultimate backup, the pantry, can provide a large palette to choose from, allowing us to shop for just one or two fresh items to create a satisfying, fulfilling, healthy meal.

Salads have always conjured up fresh, healthy, youthful thoughts, and when one considers the expression salad days (in French les annes de jeunesse) it makes us all want to consume more salads to remain eternally fresh and youthful. The word salad, in fact, comes from the Latin word for salt, sal , and to salt, or salare. Originally a salad was just greens tossed with salt; later it moved on to include all manner of greens and additions, with an unlimited number of dressings. (Speaking of salt, my favorites come from Brittany, where the sun-dried salt provides natural sources of potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, and zinc. I use fine sea salt in baking and everyday cooking, add coarse salt to water for blanching vegetables or cooking pasta, and reserve the rare fleur de sel as a finishing salt at the table.)

The French have always been huge salad fans and are fanatical about how a salad is dressed. In fact they have a great expression, fatiguer la salade, meaning that the salad must be carefully tossed and tossed until the greens are fatigu, or exhausteduntil they have absorbed all the dressing that they can. (Our good friend Jean-Claude Viviani holds court as the house salad is tossed, and insists that the salad greens must be turned thirty-three times to create a properly dressed salad!)

The inspiration for the recipes here come from all over: from meals with friends and in restaurants, from trips around my garden, and from such excellent salads as a meal as those from Greece, the American Cobb and Caesar salads, the French frise aux lardons, and the classic goat cheese wrapped in bacon and set on a sturdy bed of greens.

Whatever the salad, its success depends upon super-fresh and flavorful ingredients and plenty of crunch, a sound that satisfies. The crunch can come in the form of truly crisp young greens such as baby spinach or even the traditional iceberg lettuce, but a shower of toasted pumpkin seeds, spicy nuts, corn flour tortilla chips, and cubes of tasty Parmesan croutons can also add the essential crisp edge.

In my own personal definition, a salad as a meal does not need to include lettuce or greens; it can simply be a light and refreshing salad-related entity. A creamy chilled ricotta terrine, a protein-rich poached turkey breast dressed with herbs, a pasta flavored with a vinaigrette-like sauce of spicy mustard, a favorite chicken and tarragon terrine glistening in a sturdy gelatin, or such Middle Eastern classics as chickpea frittersor falafelteamed up with a gorgeous heirloom tomato salad and a healthy dose of tahini dressing are all salads as a meal in my book.

I have offered a chapter of appetizers that one might pair with other salads, as well as a healthy dose of soups, both hot and cold, that can be served ahead of or alongside a variety of salads.

My own personal taste is for salads with a good hit of protein, so here I have plenty of fish and shellfish carpaccio and ceviche dishes, a number that include home-smoked fish and poultry, lots of meat, and a recipe for poached chicken that can serve as the base of many a salad. Eggs and cheese can add that needed protein to any meal, and so easy egg crepes, frittatas, and my treasured ricotta terrine fit into that category.

Bread is an integral part of any salad I plan to enjoy, so I include several pizza-style flatbreads, easy bread crisps made from your favorite breads, and homemade flatbreads as well as my much-loved homemade sourdough bread, one that requires a bit of attention and discipline but pays you back in spades in terms of enjoyment and raves from family and friends.

I offer a collection of my favorite dressings but am not rigid about which dressing must go with which salad, except in the case of such classics as the revered Caesar and Cobb salads. In most cases, if one is enjoying a wine with the salad as a meal, the less vinegar in the dressing the better, since vinegar can kill the flavor of even the most modest of wines. Rather, go for a light salad dressing with a lemon, buttermilk, yogurt, or light cream base.

The extensive pantry section focuses on some of my favorite homemade foods: home-cured capers and cornichons, homemade vinegar, as well as a quick lemon confit, pickled figs, a favored series of flavored salts, brine-cured black olives, and pickled peppers.

Espelette pepper

In a perfect world we would all grow our own herbs, lettuces, and vegetables. In the summer months I am blessed with a voluptuous garden that I experiment with each year, adding varieties that we love and that do well and omitting those that dont produce or please. But even if you dont have a patch of soil, try to grow at least a few treasured herbsmint and rosemary come to mindin pots to instantly perk up and vary your salads.

For the past few years I have experimented endlessly with growing salad greens, planting a packet of seeds every few weeks during the summer, and find that some greens grow like weeds and keep delivering week after week as cut and come again stars. Others never develop into much or even if they do, they dont seem to fit into my world. So I anticipate that I will have to balance the thrills with the disappointments.

A WORD ON SUGGESTED WINES

Wine is one of the worlds greatest pleasures, and I am endlessly in search of best buys, wines that offer great flavor and simple pleasure for less. I have been careful to research each of the wines suggested here, and at this writing they are all imported into the United States. If you dont find the wine at a favorite wine store, ask the owner if he cant bring it in.