Salads are so cool lately, so chic because so many people have made them so healthy – but lets be truthfull to each other, most of them aren’t. They are filled with excessive dressing, soggy and/or doesn’t have the appropriate taste and you feel like you are eating cardboard.
This is a tutorial, promoting the logic behind salad making and not focused on one specific salad because salads are, in the end, really easy to make, and with a little imagination extremely tasty.
Greens
The salad base – this includes anything and everything that is a leafy vegetable – anything counts arugula, lettuce, romaine, iceberg, red leaf, green leaf, spinach, cabbage, radicchio…I could go on, but I’m going to stop now because this is getting out of hand.
Washing and drying is the most important step in this process. Everyone washes their greens but most of us just forgets to dry them properly. Just a simple paper towel or a kitchen towel does the trick usually. Once your greens are dried properly, they will have that crisp and clean fresh look.
Texture
Now its time to get things interesting. Adding those extra ingredients, that work with the bed of greens we just set. Crisp, creamy, juicy, crunchy is my usually texture module
Crisp: the bed of greens i
Creamy: I am a big fan of creamy things to set the tone to my salad eggs, avocados, baby potatoes, burrata, moccarela, feta – this is what you should think of.
Juicy: After adding the creamy component, it is important to think of how you want your salad to taste. Next in line are juicy parts. I usually try not to mix too much juicy and creamy components because too much of a good thing is never that good. By juicy I mean fruits, ripe fruits like berries, tomatoes pears, figs etc etc
Crunchy: This is more like Crunchy/dry/chewy that consists on roasted nuts, dried fruits, seeds or anything that can surprise the salad taste. These ingredients might seem so unnecessary but are the ones that cleanse your palette and add that extra yumminess to your salad.
Fresh Herbs
These fresh greens are crispy and with a lot of flavor. Anything that you can think off works that takes that salad to a Salad(with a capital S). Add chopped fresh basil, green onions, parsley or mint to elevate the taste.
Dressing
Dressing is less of a choice to more of requirement. I am a big fan of simple olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette type of eater but you can make it more interesting with Dijon mustard, mayo, yoghurt or any creamy substance that you can think of. Either way I don’t want to seem too intrusive but for a salad to stay a salad, olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette are perfect.
Do not forget – Salt and pepper – NEVER WITHOUT
Presentation
There are a couple of presentation tips, which most of you know but here are the tricks
- Toss the salad with all the ingredients in the bowl so you do not have to do it on the table – it can get messy. If you want to make it look good, after tossing, decorate it with any extra ingredients. My point of view is that a salad is never ugly so you don’t need to decorate anything – that glistening crispy greens are really cool to begin with
- If you are taking it for a work lunch, never mix the dressing with the salad – it will get soggy. You can use mason jars and add the juicy, creamy, crispy and then crunchy ingredients in that row – take extra containers for the dressing – when you are ready to eat it, just unscrew, add the dressing, screw it back and shake vigorously.
There you go – changing the salad to a Salad – easy breezy.
