Salad for a Start

I knew there were going to be some challenges in moving from a well stocked cooperative kitchen to my own place 200 miles away.  The fun part is how it is not the challenges you see coming that throw you for a loop . . . it is the collection of tiny important details that catch you off guard.  Much is the same with cooking; you can have a plan and walk into the kitchen ready to execute said plan but it is often only when we are dicing that we realize some important factors have been forgotten.  

For the next few posts I am going to focus on Salads.  A decent salad will not really fill you up but it will provide an abundance of nutrients and flavor that is very satisfying.  They can also have a great range in terms of difficulty and simplicity.  The salad I am eating right now :

                          

was made in less than 20 minutes and is delicious.  Salads are also surprisingly difficult to mess up. . . I mean obviously if you are working from sub standard ingredients the flavor will be sub standard but if you start from quality you will get something pleasantly edible 9 times out of 10.  Making salads also introduce us to a lot of basic kitchen technique in terms of preparation and attention to detail. Finally, Salads act as a wonderful medium to explore flavor and flavor combinations, Really I could spend the majority of my time talking about salads and ideas for salad, often pushing the definition of what a salad is, without getting bored or the feeling of repeating myself.  Looking back, making salads was also the first thing I learned to do when I began cooking so it seems like a good place to start from now.  

Basic End of Summer Salad:

When you step into a nearly empty kitchen and wonder what you are going to eat, salad is a great answer.  No cooking needed, a lot of the prep can be done with just a knife and if it comes out on the bland side you can always hit it with a super packed flavor dressing!  

Just making a salad for myself (weird huh) I take half the head and rinse it in cool water and put it in a bowl with a  quick dash of vinegar. An early dash of vinegar will help cut off any bitterness in the greens, and if your greens were not bitter to begin with then you are still fine.  Reaching for the carrot I have my first ho no moment. . . I don't have a knife! I mean I have a serrated table knife like you would see next to your plate at a steak joint but nothing decent for chopping or slicing.

I manage to cut the carrot into rounds and dice the tomato into cubes with this knife but I am reminded of an important fact.  Having the right tools can make a job easier. . . not only that but having the wrong tools can make a task unpleasant.  I wonder how many people in the world don't like cooking because they have always used poor quality cutlery.   If someone put a decent chefs knife in their hand maybe they would be dicing up a storm and cooking for friends as often as possible!  I will address quality knives in the future. . . for now we still have a hungry belly.  

I was lucky that I came to this new kitchen with some tomatoes and corn gifted from my dear farm girl Katie.   I imagine if I didn't have them I would have bought some but there is nothing cooler  than living with the person responsible for growing your food . . . ok growing ti with them is but you get my drift.  Cutting the corn off the cob is easy if you break the cob in half first so there is a flat surface to put on the cutting board.  And cutting the corn off the cob would actually be done with the knife I am using!  I did a little bit of red onion and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. . .but these are also the last remnants of my food from the old kitchen dream land.  There will need to be some serious shopping later this week but first we are making a salad dressing.

Again this is a simple dressing because I just don't have that much.  Since I already have some vinegar on the greens I go for a 50/50 mix of fat and acid (normally I like my dressing with a bit more acid but this is personal preference and you should play with your ratios).


I added a half of a lemon, juiced, just to add complexity to the flavor of the acid.  For fat I use olive oil with some coconut oil mashed in.  I would have gone straight coconut oil but the temperature has my coconut oil solid.  By cutting in some olive oil i make a nice creamy dressing that has good body.  I let a diced clove of garlic soak in that oil mix while I grind pepper in and . . . then  . . . bloody hell I don't have salt!!! I, Me, I don't have salt!  I have never been on the low sodium band wagon and occasionally have the problem of over-salting my food because I really enjoy salty foods.  I honestly almost ran right out the door and across town to get salt but I was already so hungry and really salt is just a flavor amplifier (really important don't get me wrong but yeah we can skip it this once).   I would estimate 2 Tbs of oil and 2 Tbs of vinegar in this dressing and it made too much for my half head of lettuce salad.  Normally I would grab a piece of bread and soak up the dressing on some toast but. . .no bread in the house right now.  

The salad is really satisfying.  The combination of textures keeps my pallet curious while the mixing of flavors and the pucker of the vinegar leaves me craving bite after bite.  Just some soft greens (not kale or chard or collards or any other of those hearty greens) a bit of bite sized vegetables and a simple oil/vinegar dressing.  It honestly took me more time to write this up than it did to make the salad!