But I can't have Cincinnati chili every day, every week, not even every month. It is something I make now about once or twice a year, usually when my sister Andrea is visiting from Santa Barbara and mandates we throw a pot on the stove. So, I can't say that's my favorite food because what the heck else would I be eating the other 364 days of the year? So my daily favorite food is the Salad. Here's what's great about the Salad: you can do it however you want. You can put all of the things you love in there and none of the things you hate.
My parents are each great cooks in their respective specialties. My mom can whip anything up out of anything, and my dad can put together specialty foods, like a beautiful Thai dish or hand made pasta, with his surgeon-sharpened attention to detail and fine motor skills. They were also adventurous and had a taste for fine foods and fun foods, ethnic foods and exotic foods. Dinner was always a cooperative feat in our house, though there were times when my mom definitely didn't feel that way. ("You're lucky I didn't serve you potato chips!") Someone set the table, someone cleaned up, my mom usually cooked and I always elbowed in there to help make the salad. We would open up the cabinets and I would go at it. A can of this (palm hearts, perhaps) and a jar of that (fancy olives, maybe) was always at my disposal, and I learned to love salads and salad making. My grandmother always made her signature salad and dressing, and I recall wanting to drink the remaining vinaigrette right out of the bowl. I won't lie, I did it a lot. She would put oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, italian spices & one half-packet of sweet-n-low and dress it atop a classic iceberg salad with tomatoes and not much else. I don't think my grandfather had the same sense of adventure with salads as I but it didn't matter...the salad was merely a vehicle for the dressing. And that's when I learned about dressing making. You need an oil, an acid, and a sugar to cut the acid. I remember recreating this (minus the sweet-n-low) and thinking I had discovered liquid gold. Bottled dressings never quite did it for me. I wasn't a ranch fanatic. I have since grown to love blue cheese dressing but I couldn't have disliked it more at that point. I was into vinaigrettes. Then I remember watching a Martha Stewart segment where she whipped up her own dijon vinaigrette and and whole new realm of "body" to the dressing became opened up for me. But it was watching my mom make homemade green goddess dress that I think that was truly the end of it for me. I realized I didn't have to compromise with bottled dressing, which I felt bastardized the fresh artistry of a beautifully crafted salad. Since then, I've been making my own dressing. I bought a bottle of salad dressing the other year and I didn't like it. It sat in my fridge for months and months until I finally tried it again. I still didn't like it. I think I even threw the salad I had made away. At restaurants, I ask for the dressing on the side. Not to control calories (although that is a good unintended consequence) but rather to control flavor. Since my fresh faced teenage years, I've continued to rely on the vinaigrette as a main-stay, but have also found great success in making my own buttermilk ranch, blue cheese dressing, sesame-ginger dressing, lime jalapeno cilantro dressing and those "kitchen sink" dressings in the off times. Here's my formula: oil + acid + sweetener + mustard + seasoning. Add creamy factor where you desire. Take away mustard factor if that is your preference.
- oil - your preference. A lot of people love Olive oil. I stick with classic canola. I also keep a sesame oil.
- vinegar or acid - balsamic, red wine, apple cider, rice, lemon juice, lime juice
- sweetener - splenda, sugar, brown sugar, honey, orange juice
- for creamy dressings - greek yogurt
- for the mustard factor - stone ground mustard (Inglehoffer)
- seasonings: salt, pepper, roasted garlic paste (make by roasting a whole head of garlic and mashing it into paste), green onions, jalapenos, ginger, cilantro, italian seasonings
The other formula I came up with helped me combine textures and consistencies to create a well-balanced salad. It's based on 7 elements (for me). I implore you to not laugh at me for including "onion" in it's own group. I mean, you have red onions, green onions, shallots, white onions, vidalia onions, carmelized onions, and battered+fried onions...
The Amanda Hall formula for an ideal salad:
greens + a cheese + an onion + a nut + a fruit + a protein + accompanying vegetables.
- Greens: what's your preference? I like spinach, I like some kale, I like red & green leaf lettuce. I like butter lettuce. I like romaine. But. I don't love raddichio, iceburg lettuce or anything that resembles a field dandelion or nettles.
- Cheese: where do you begin. There's parmesan, reggiano, blue cheese, mozzarella, goat cheese, feta cheese, smoked gouda. Makes me relieved I'm not lactose intolerant.
- Onion: see above
- Nuts: Almonds, pepita seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, walnuts, pecans, peanuts, cashews
- Fruits: raisins, apples, raspberries, blackberries, orange segments, peaches, cherries, grapes!
- Vegetable combo: green beans (cooked or raw), asparagus (blanched 3 minutes), tomatoes (technically a fruit?), jicima, sweet potato chunks
- Protein: hard boiled egg, poached egg, deli turkey, rotisserie chicken, tuna fish, salmon, black beans
Here are my other theories:
- Be more elegant in how you slice and prepare your ingredients. A thinly sliced red onion will provide the subtle flavor you desire, while a coarsely chunked onion will knock you in the mouth with onion and probably stick with you for the rest of the day (and may even be accompanied by indigestion).
- When you go to put your first handful of greens on the plate or in the bowl, take about half back out. Keep this in mind for every other ingredient. If you were thinking about putting a whole can of tuna on that salad, try maybe only a third. People's eyes are usually far bigger than their mouths when it comes to salads. And when you get creative and start using a variety of ingredients, it will result in a salad that is what my quirky roommate calls "bigger than your head." I don't ever want that kind of salad.
- Be mindful of the presentation. Even if it's only for yourself. I think of the novel "Girl with a Pearl Earring," written by Tracy Chevalier as an attempt to recreate the story behind the famous Vermeer work or the same name. She chronicles Griet, a young girl who goes to work as a maid in the Vermeer household and subsequently becomes his muse and the subject of the piece. She was plucked from her household because of her eye for aesthetics and precision with a knife. She would prepare food for her blind father, perfectly cutting each vegetable or fruit, all the while her internal monologue narrating the vibrancy, color, and texture of each food she was preparing. It was that passage that impacted me. I watch a lot of cooking competition shows and marvel at their rapid cutting chopping and cutting, but prefer to expertly slice and dice, with a sharpened knife and my own internal monologue. I guess this ties into point number one about preparing ingredients more elegantly. Food memories certainly are powerful, as I learned on Top Chef Masters the other week.
So here's the breakfast salad I made for myself this morning. Pardon the poor cell phone photo of it.
- spinach & spring greens
- green onions
- gouda cheese
- mesquite smoked turkey
- pink lady apple
- pepita seeds
- green peppers
- poached egg
- blue cheese balsamic dressing (blue cheese crumbles, greek yogurt, balsamic vinegar, roasted garlic paste, diced jalapenos, salt + pepper, splenda)
It is now completely gone.
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