SALAD! Salad? Yes! Salad!

Oh Yes. Salad. Green, crisp, fresh, bright, refreshing, soft, crunchy, beautiful, tasty and also - It's good for you!

How can it not be life giving? It's just leaves and veg. Or is it? What about salad dressing? Maybe people forget that vital part and that's why salad gets bad press?

How unfair that it's perceived as boring, it's such a big mistake. To make matters worse, hardly anyone knows how to make a proper salad dressing. In fact I think most people try to eat salad without a dressing at all! And that is a travesty and those people are boring.

A few tiny drops of the simplest ingredients take seconds to add but massively enhance a salad transforming the leaves into something much, much more. Why on earth wouldn't you do this?

Start off simple. Just buy the freshest ordinary Round lettuce you can find. Round lettuce is the medium sized floppy one that looks least interesting on the supermarket shelf. It is a wolf in lettuce clothing. It should cost less than 50p.

When you get it home trim about 2cm off at the stem to release the leaves. If the smaller leaves are still attached to the stem then gently pull them off and trim the stalk away until the leaves are all separated. 

Now wash the lettuce by rinsing in cold water. I splosh them about in a washing up bowl but you can just do it under a running tap or in a colander if you've got one. Make sure the water is cold. What you are doing here is twofold. Firstly washing off any dirt from the field they were grown in but second is to 'refresh' the leaves. This is important. Even though a lot of salad is grown in a dirt-free environment you should definitely refresh the leaves in cold water before you use them.

You do have to dry them though. A salad spinner makes light work of this but then so does a clean teatowel. Just drain them for a couple of minutes and then pat the leaves gently to get most of the water. A little water left is quite ok.

Rip the leaves with your hands into bite-sized pieces. This can feel like it's bruising the leaves and you should be as gentle as you can but don't use a knife to cut lettuce except on the strongest varieties like Iceberg and Cos. For some reason I don't understand tearing and not cutting helps the leaves to stay perky.

Now make a vinaigrette. It's embarrassingly easy. Ingredients are olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Proportions are up to you but generally the advice is to make it mostly oil with only a little bit of vinegar and just a little salt and pepper. I'd try ten parts oil to one part vinegar, half a tsp of salt and the same of fresh black pepper. Shake or whisk with a fork. Don't worry if it refuses to combine - it will still coat the salad - that's normal.

If you can do this (And who can't? Honestly.) then you are on the brink of a whole load of variations.

Try:
lemon juice instead of vinegar or half and half.
Try Orange juice.
Try different vinegar: Tarragon, Cider, red and white wine - they're all out there so no excuses!

Add a teaspoon of mustard. Try different mustards. Dijon or grainy are always nice or English mustard powder works well and helps the vinaigrette to emulsify and cling to the lettuce.

Try different oil. You can use ordinary cooking oil (which is normally rape seed oil these days), sunflower oil, groundnut (peanut) oil. Or Extra Virgin olive oil of which there is a whole world of different types. For this my choice would be a really dark green one. Greek olive oil is like this.

Some people add a little cold water to a vinaigrette to avoid it overpowering the other food served.

And that's just vinaigrette.

If you make a standard four part vinaigrette, add a heaped dessertspoon of mayonnaise and the same of yogurt and mix it well you will have a 'Swiss' dressing. this is lovely on slightly crunchier leaves like Cos or Romain. This is the one for Salad Nicoise with black olives, croutons, anchovies and boiled eggs.

More substantial dressings have more and more mayonnaise with grated parmesan or blue cheese (Stilton or Danish Blue) but be careful not to add too much salt as well as the cheese. We are into Caesar salad territory now.

Like anything there are tons of variations on Caesar salad dressing. Essentially it is mayonnaise loosened with lemon juice and a little oil. But it should also have grated parmesan and crushed raw garlic mixed well in. A Caesar salad uses a crunchy lettuce like Romaine with croutons and this amazing dressing.

So what sort of salads will you make? Depends a lot on you and what you can get that is fresh and tasty. And don't forget hot new potatoes, roasted vegetables, bacon, nuts and seeds.

We haven't even mentioned the huge lot of bag salads you can get. And what about Coleslaw! That's worth a post just on its own!

Happy salad!