If you’re a similar age to me, you probably remember what salad used to be like. There was round leaved floppy lettuce, slices of cucumber, sometimes in vinegar, slices of tomato, slices of beetroot, always in vinegar, radishes, spring onions and sometimes watercress but more usually cress. It was dressed with salad cream, a sort of vinegary mayonnaise which could also be used on boiled eggs to make an egg salad or cold diced potatoes to make a potato salad. Becuase my dad grew all our vegetables, the individual items tasted all right, but it was all a bit wet and even though the radishes would be crunchy, there was a lack of texture.
Salad these days has become much more exotic with all sorts of differently flavoured leaves of all different textures and crunch and colour. I still do like round lettuces… not the massed produced hydroponically farmed ones, but the old varieties with plenty of flavour… but even so, they are a bit… floppy.
I made a nice salad today with round leaves and also some Romaine hearts and herbs; I added some red pepper, some grated carrot, grated cheese, cauliflower,dressed it with cauliflower, and then for extra crunch and texture a really generous handful of Bombay mix – you know the dried peas and lentils and noodles and peanuts and spices and unidentifiable nice things? It was brilliant! The spicy mix enhanced the flavour of the lettuce and other ingredients and with a great big splash of Greek olive oil, my lunch was complete!
Lois Elsden 