Salads
There's nothing I can write here which is going to make you want to read 1200 words about salad, so you're just going to have to trust me.
Sometimes I worry that I keep telling the same stories over and over again - tiny violin for Bexie who became a single mum, a handful of anecdotes about the 2023 Slut Phase and sprinkle of anecdotes about my current relationship, light on detail because I’m afraid of jinxing it by seeming smug, and a bit of chat about having a child which comes with a side order of guilt for monetising her childhood.
Obviously those are the things I talk about because they’re the most relevant things to my life, but I do fear being a bit one note on here, and the beauty of a Substack is that I can actually write anything I want. So this week, rather than a story about the horrors of my life between the years 2018 and 2022, I’m going to talk to you about salad.
I thought that I didn’t like salad for a really, really long time. This was not ideal because I really disliked the idea of being an adult who ‘doesn’t like’ vegetables. There’s something sort of stunted and worrisome about being that kind of person. Anyway, happily I’ve found out that what I actually don’t like is not salad, but big bits of leaf in my mouth. I’m not sure if it’s me being a bit odd, or whether the cellulose in leaves is actually punchier in a big piece of salad, but either way. Really, really finely chopped salads are a game changer. They get drenched in dressing more easily and are still crunchy as fuck, which is what I’m looking for here.
Whenever I make a salad I remember how women’s magazines in the noughties used to tell you to be REALLY CAREFUL about salad dressing because it’s PACKED with calories. And then I remember that even if you’ve got three hundred calories of dressing, which is a very generous estimation, if you’ve poured three hundred calories of dressing over an iceberg lettuce, you’ve still consuming 314 calories which is not nearly enough to constitute and entire meal. So you have to put other things in it too.
Lately I’ve taken to buying a really expensive tomato. I like the fact that there’s a cap on how much a tomato can realistically cost. So when I go to the Northcote Road, which is the boujiest high street in my fairly bouji part of London, I can buy the same tomato as the woman in front of me. I can’t afford her Volvo SUV, or her kids’ school fees, or her Celine sunglasses. But we can have the exact same tomato, and that pleases me.
I then go home, often with my boyfriend who works from home on a Friday, and I slice and salt the tomatoes. I’ve been hearing noise about salting your tomatoes for years, but I have a bit of a tendency to assume that if I don’t already do something, it’s not actually that important. This has been my downfall in lots of ways, and like a lot of other really ubiquitous advice (go for a walk if you’re feeling sad, make your bed in the morning, be nice to waiters) it is completely correct. Salting them makes an enormous difference. So much so that I will now very happily have a bit of foaccia with some sliced tomatoes, olive oil, black pepper and basil, for my lunch, and feel like I’ve had the best and most complicated thing imaginable.
There’s a flexibility of thinking required when it comes to salads. I’m a convert to croutons. The croutons I’ve eaten in the past were shit - tooth denting cubes of hard bread, looking a bit like the brown sugar cubes you get sitting on on a cafe table day after day. There is no joy in that crouton at all. Instead I like to find whatever bread is looking saddest in the fridge (I keep bread in the fridge because I don’t have enough cupboard space, please do not come for me, I am not happy or proud about it). Often it’s bread that I’ve baked because it transpires that baking bread is a piece of piss and makes you feel like a staggeringly competent triumph of a woman. This is the easiest recipe I’ve found for standard bread. It’s foolproof unless you (I) strive too hard and Icarus like, try to double it, at which point it will not work at all. I’ve also got a very good one for a focaccia which is perfect every time, but it’s one I made up and it exists as a voice note on Whatsapp, so if you want it let me know and I’ll forward it.
Tear up the bread, touch it up with some oil and garlic (I’m quite fond of that horrible Fry-Lite stuff because it makes things very crispy, but I’m also trying to avoid ultra processed food and I think that Fry-Lite is probably mostly made of microplastics. Put it in a pan and toaat it until it’s sufficiently crunchy. Put it in with your very finely chopped lettuce and anything else which excites you. This is where the flexibility of thinking comes in because at this point you’ve basically made a deconstructed sandwich. But it’s not a sandwich, it’s a delicious salad, and salads needs dressings.
There are two really brilliant dressings which I’m going to try to sell you on. The first is this one, from the La Scala chopped salad. It’s the favourite of the Kardashians, invented in 1950s LA, and I tried it because I’m extremely easily influenced. Unlike the other things I’ve bought because of Kimberly and Ko (waist trainers, anyone?) I have no regrets about the La Scala chopped salad. It’ sharp and salty and fucking delicious. I made it for my boyfriend the other week, historically not a salad man, and he experienced a Damocean conversion such that if I want him to work from home (he disapproves of doing so) I will use this salad as a bribe.
I’ve changed the OG recipe a bit for my own tastes, swapping the chickpeas in the salad for a spoon of hummus on the top, because hummus is fantastic. Make your own, it will be better. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I’ve also swapped the mustard in the dressing for truffle mustard because it’s always the 2016 truffle trend in my heart.
The other dressing I’m evangelical about is a version of a Caesar dressing made with yogurt. Again I think this is originally about reducing the calorie content but actually yogurt is a much nicer base for a salad dressing than mayonnaise is. There are millions of version of it online and I can’t remember which one I started with, but you’re clever, you can work it out. Greek yog, minced garlic, bit of olive oil, parmesan or pecorino, Lea & Perrins (I forgot about L&P until last month and have now fallen into its arms like a long lost lover. Put some anchovies in if you’re a salty gal. Lemon juice. Actual salt. Black pepper. Water if you’ve splashed out and used Fage, no water if you’ve used the very liquid own-brand one all the supermarkets provide. I’m into this with again, super finely chopped lettuce, sexy croutons, shaved parmesan and if I’ve got any meat-based leftovers in the fridge I’ll slice them up and chuck them in. Halloumi would also be delish.
There is probably a Carrie Bradshaw type moral I could hammer out at this juncture, something about learning that you don’t always know what you like, and needing to be open to new things. Or, more earnestly, a reflection about how I once used salads to punish my body and strive to be smaller, and now I use them to balance wanting to reward my body with the appropriate nutrients, making them higher in calories and higher in enjoyment and overall improving my nutritional profile by inches rather than by miles. But it would take me a few minutes to find those conclusions, and I’m keen to send this to you straight away because it’s gearing up for lunch time and I’m very much hoping I might convince you to make a salad.
Count me in for the Salad Appreciation Society. Always go for a salade composée in France where they have of course made it into an art - the perfect combination of fat, protein, crunch and sharp.
Salting tomatoes is such a revelation - I do it overnight then add feta and good bread for a ridiculously delicious breakfast in the summer. Tomatoes also will improve, even supermarket ones, if left on a sunny windowsill for a week or two, as they will continue to ripen. I find the cherry toms work best, though tbh the pallid greenish value pack ones are probably gas-grown and pretty much beyond redemption, but it does work on your average disappointing British tom especially if salted.
My fav chopped salad is a Turkish Cypriot one - I use Meliz Berg’s recipe from Meliz Cooks - can’t find it online but it's pretty simple: good black olives; cherry toms halved; cucumber deseeded and cut into kind of thumb sized chunks; a quarter to a half of sweetheart cabbage shredded fine
y (about a mean half-a-centimetre slices), about the same amount of cos-type lettuce cut the same; half to a small whole sweet white onion, finely sliced - use the fat ‘salad onions’ when you see them, or slice up spring onions; about half a large bunch of coriander, chopped! and a tablespoon of dried (not fresh) mint. Dress by chucking a tablespoon of lemon juice, some salt and real pepper, and then probably two to three tbs olive oil and mix furiously. The cabbage sounds weird but gives extra crunch without being at all cabbagey, and the coriander/dried mint combo is ace. I love that this tastes fantastic made with bog standard supermarket ingredients (though I do buy big tubs of olives from a Turkish supermarket) and is as good in winter as in summer.
Also search Meliz’s website for ‘bidda’ which are heavenly really flexible flatbreads. I use my breadmaker almost exclusively for kneading dough these days: 10 mins on the pizza setting does for these. If anyone has an unused breadmaker lurking, do try making bread (as Rebecca says, SO easy) just using flour, yeast, water and salt. Use only the dough setting , shape and turf into a bread tin to have another rise and bake in the oven. More faff than buying it but will be a revelation if you tried it before with all the milk powder and butter and random shit the booklet suggests to give you an nice sliced white type of loaf. Because everybody bought a breadmaker to replicate a Hovis loaf at fair expense and inconvenience, right?
One of my proudest achievements, other than converting my husband from drinking lager to real ale, is introducing him to tomato-salting. It's the difference between meh and Masterchef. Also, I know they're cringingly retro and probably very unfashionable, but can I raise a hand for sundried tomatoes in salads (and a splash of the oil in dressing)? Rediscovered them recently and now my salads party like it's 1999.