Salad Dressing

As much as I like big flavors, I sometimes want something more gentle, a little genteel even. French beans lend themselves to such cooking.

Anyone who has shelled a bag of peas will know how good they are raw. Far too little is made of their scrunchy sweetness, and I put forward the pod-fresh raw pea as an idea to throw into salads of pale yellow butterhead lettuce, cracked wheat, or dishes of cooked fava beans. They work in their uncooked state only when very young and small. Old peas are mealy and sour. One rainy lunchtime in June, I put them into a simple salad of Peter Rabbit lettuce, crisply cooked smoked bacon, and hand-torn ciabatta. The result—restrained, refreshing, and somehow quintessentially English.

Among the charcoal and garlic of midsummer’s more robust cooking, a quiet salad of palest green can come as a breath of calm. Last June, as thousands joined hands around Stonehenge in celebration of the summer solstice, I put together a salad of cool notes: mint, fava beans, and young peas—a bowl of appropriate gentility and quiet harmony.

Even though much of the bitterness of this cultivar has been bred out, some extra sweetness is often welcome. Casting around for something sweet to scatter over a plate of steamed kale, I suddenly remembered the Sicilian habit of adding golden raisins to soft, sweet onions. The contrast between the leaves and their seasoning is strangely comforting. Quite when you might eat this is debatable. We first ate it with treacly rye bread and Gruyère cheese, next to fillets of smoked mackerel. It is tricky to know where it would sit most comfortably.

The juicy crunch of a raw artichoke bears many of the qualities of a water chestnut. Few ingredients pack such snowy crispness. I use them in a parsley-flecked salad to add a snap to baked pork chops, but have also offered them at a Saturday bread’n’cheese lunch of Cornish Yarg and Appleby’s Cheshire. Lemon is essential if the peeled tubers are not to discolor.

“Monday cold cuts” is a key dish in our house: it shows our intent to use every scrap, to make the most of what we have, but it also gives me a break. It is one meal I don’t have to think about other than sharpening the carving knife. The appearance of thin slices of cold meat on the first day of the week also gives me a chance to consider a side dish more interesting than a baked potato. Sometimes I bring out a bubble and squeak, fried in my old cast-iron pan, or some leftover mashed root vegetables warmed in a bowl over hot water with a tablespoon of butter; other times it’s red cabbage, shredded with pickled walnuts as black as coal. Another favorite is a warm salad of some sort of root vegetable, fried or steamed, then turned in a mustardy dressing.

There is a Spanish stall at the market. Each Saturday in midsummer I wait patiently at the counter while the jamon is carved. I am unsure which is more beautiful: the long, elegant leg on its steel stand or the fluid, methodical way in which the carver slices the gossamer-thin morsels of meat from the bone. I never take much, its price is breathtaking, but once home I savor every mouthful, as much out of respect for my wallet as for the pig. If I find young fava beans, or the ones in the garden are ready to pick, I marry the two—a simple plate of densely flavored, fat-besplodged ham the color of dried blood and fresh, bright-green beans. There is usually soup on the table too, watercress or spinach or fresh pea, and some scraps of dry, mild-tasting Manchego.

There is something uplifting about refreshing food eaten on a frosty day. What follows is a light, fresh-tasting salad that makes your eyes sparkle.

As much as I appreciate the traditional rendition of the sort of celery root rémoulade you might get in a Parisian brasserie, I also like to shake it up a bit. Including the ham, or even bacon, in the salad rather than serving it alongside gives the meat a while to get to know the other ingredients, becoming more than just an accompaniment. An alternative to bacon would be shreds of smoked venison or prosciutto, or maybe smoked mackerel. Radish sprouts are stunningly colored sprouted seeds with a spicy heat. Enterprising natural food shops and supermarkets have them, or you can sprout your own in a salad sprouter. If they evade you, you could use any sprouted seed here.

Crème fraîche or strained yogurt offers many of the qualities of mayonnaise but with a cleaner, more piquant character. Beating in a small amount of olive or walnut oil will nudge it toward the perfect coating consistency of a classic mayonnaise-type rémoulade dressing. Using these tart alternatives lends a lightness, too.

Many of my most pleasing suppers have been one-off, chucked-together affairs made with whatever was to hand. A question of making do. I rarely write them down, assuming that no one else will be interested in something that simply filled a hole with whatever happened to be around at the time. This was one of those meals, taken as lunch in early March when the cupboard was pretty bare, but I thought I would pass it on for its frugal, done-in-a minute quality and as yet another opportunity to do something with the celery root that turns up in the organic veg box.

Enoki mushrooms are also known as “snowpuffs” or “golden needle” mushrooms because of their long, stretched stems and white caps. They come to us from Japan, where they are served raw or lightly cooked. Enoki are usually sold refrigerated in sealed plastic packets of 3.5 to 7 ounces. Despite their delicate appearance, they have a surprisingly meaty texture, especially when roasted. Mirin, or rice wine, is a sweet Japanese cooking wine that has a low alcohol content. If you can’t find mirin, substitute a tablespoon of honey mixed with a drop of white wine.

I’m not fond of a garlic press—cleaning out all the holes is a chore. I prefer chopping garlic, but finely chopping or mashing large quantities to a paste (see page 72) can be tiresome. Recently I picked up my Microplane, a rasp-type grater, and grated the garlic directly over my saucepan. A couple of swipes back and forth and the garlic had disappeared into the pan below.

Roquefort is a blue-veined, smooth, and creamy French sheep’s milk cheese with a strong smell and very pronounced flavor. It is one of the oldest known cheeses, having been produced in the south of France for almost two thousand years. Only cheeses made according to specific standards of production and matured in caves near the village of Roquefort, France, may be called Roquefort. Similar blue cheeses to try in this dressing include American Maytag Blue, a regional cheese from South Carolina known as Clemson Blue, English Stilton, and Italian Gorgonzola. Try this on green salad, with chicken wings, or with raw or blanched vegetables as a great crudité dip.

The secret to a creamy, emulsified dressing or vinaigrette is mustard. You’ve probably noticed that when you combine oil and vinegar in a bowl they form separate layers. If you whisk the mixture it will combine only for a brief period, then separate out again. Mustard helps thicken liquid sauces by absorbing some of the liquid and allows the suspension of one liquid in another. Try this savory-sweet combination over crisp salad greens or buttercup lettuce or as a dipping sauce for the Oven-fried Chicken Breasts with Pecan Crust (page 102). If Vidalias are unavailable, use another sweet onion, such as Walla Walla or Texas Sweet.

Chicken salad is one of my all-time favorite dishes. It’s good mounded in a butter lettuce cup or spread between two slices of whole wheat bread. Many recipes call for poached chicken. Years ago, when trying to replicate the famous chicken salad then sold at Zabar’s, the renowned food market on New York’s Upper West Side, I tried roasting the chicken at a low temperature on the bone. When meat, any meat, is cooked on the bone, it is more tender and juicy. I still do not know whether this is how Zabar’s did it, but it is delicious and wonderfully simple.

I cannot serve this salad without thinking of my friend Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield. Her family is the Stuckey’s of the roadside stores and Pecan Log Rolls. Her grandfather opened his first pecan stand in 1937. This simple stand evolved into a veritable empire of Stuckey’s Pecan Shoppes, the highway heaven of souvenirs, cold drinks, and pecan candy. The pecan log roll, for the uninitiated, is a secret combination of sweet, fluffy goo in a coating of crushed pecans, created by Stephanie’s grandmother. In this recipe, once the goat cheese is rolled in pecans it looks undeniably like the candied confection, although the taste is savory.

Fresh and colorful, this salad is a far cry from the concoction made with canned green beans and pinto beans. Wax beans are a yellow version of the snap bean. They remain pale yellow once cooked and are a nice color contrast to the green beans and red tomatoes.