Endless Salads
Considering the choices, anything goes in salads
Saying the word salad traditionally invokes the image of tossed greens and a few garnishes ready for a dressing. Today’s world of salads is so encompassing, the imaginative cook can prepare salads as meals every day and rarely serve the same thing twice.
Once salads were iceberg lettuce, now there are pasta salads, slaws, fruit salad, seafood salad, taco salads, poultry salads or even a tossed salad with meat on top. The choices make dinner planning easier when they become the main dish instead of an appetizer.
Tossed Salad
Lettuces are generally in four categories: looseleaf; butterhead; crisphead; and romaine. A prime example of a crisphead is iceberg lettuce. Its round head is tightly packed leaves where butterheads are also round, but the leaves are looser and have a smoother texture.
The elongated leaves of romaine and its thick white rib are the outstanding physical characteristics in this group. As the name states, looseleaf lettuces are loosely gathered, growing as a rosette, enabling the grower to just remove the leaves rather than harvest the entire plant.
Salad blends are best according to Linda Freyou at Antique Roseville. She prefers a spring mix which combines different types of lettuce. She said iceberg is the one considered to have no real nutritional value. A good rule of thumb is that nutritional value goes up as the green in the leaves gets darker, she said.
By combining different greens in a mix, some are mild like Boston, bibb or endive. Another should be a crisp lettuce like romaine or cabbage. The third kind should be tart, peppery or bitter greens, like arugula or radicchio.
Freyou said she likes to decorate her salads for the occasion. At Mardi Gras she uses yellow and green bell peppers with purple cabbage topping off the lettuce. This gives the salad a festive confetti look, she said.
Eating out at a restaurant with family doesn’t change her habit of eating salads. It’s one of her favorite foods so she orders salads for her main dish, she said.
Trying New Foods
Travel gives Freyou a chance to try new foods and years ago while traveling in Austria, she was introduced to a favorite salad to both eat and serve to dining guests.
“Caprese Salad is very simplistic but my family loves the flavors. A nice red tomato, cheese and basil topped with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, it’s heaven,” she said.
For variations in the assembly of Caprese salad, Freyou searches the Internet to find pictures which only spark the imagination.
Protein Salads
For decades Francine Garzotto has been featured in the Cajun Creole Cookbook and cook-off so it is easy to say, she likes to put everything but the kitchen sink in her cooking.
Last year her minced Muffuletta Dip was entered in the Appetizer competition but it could almost be considered an anti-pasta salad for the combination of black and green olives, salami, pepperoni, cheeses, celery, bell pepper and spices.
Looking back in the archives of The Daily Iberian Cajun Creole Cookbook, Garzotto’s Chicken-Vegetable Vinaigrette was the Editor’s Choice Winner in 1994. Featured in Today’s Recipes, this combination of protein and vegetables is one way of turning your salad into a main coarse.
The combinations of ingredients in chicken salads has increased through the year to include grapes, chopped apples, fresh basil, nuts and more but does not diminish the goodness of the simple chicken salad. Thus the variety of salads continues.
Turkey, pork, tuna and ham have also been tossed with mayonnaise, celery, pickles and onion to top a bed of lettuce. Pam Shensky knows all about preparing fresh ingredients for protein salads and has even found a way to put a salad into a sandwich with pita bread.
The combination of tuna salad, fresh lettuce, cucumber and tomato on pita bread at her family’s restaurant, Caribbean Ice, turns a basic scoop of tuna into a dietary delight. Adding the salad ingredients creates a fresh taste that no ordinary sandwich or salad expects to taste like.
Shensky is a farm to table cook that believes in fresh ingredients. Since she began cooking for her family, her backyard has supplied vegetables and herbs for meal planning as well as honey for sweetening breakfast foods, desserts as well as beverages.
Dessert and Fruit Salads
Whether starting a meal with a salad or ending one, fruit is a great addition to the menu and offers its own multitude of mutations. Adding strawberries, pears, grapes, blueberries, apples or mandarin oranges is a simple way of a turning an ordinary salad into a taste treat.
Chefs experimenting with spinach salads may have been the first to add the juicy ingredient to salads.
Have you considered that a spinach salad with fruit, egg and bacon is a low-carb substitute for pancakes in the morning for breakfast?
Fry the bacon in a pan rather than microwaving. Boil scramble or fry an egg and place on spinach. Add honey to the bacon drippings, throw in a few pecans, stirring until heated and glazed, and pour as dressing on top of the salad. The wilted spinach salad expands the “salad” offerings once again to another mealtime.
Congealed salads have a tradition of church socials and family gatherings. With or without fruit, cream cheese, whipped cream, nuts or diced vegetables, they are perfect for any meal giving light and tasty alternatives to menus for Thanksgiving or Easter.
Refrigerated or frozen they make dessert time not quite the guilt trip often associated with Christmas and other occasions.
Another recipe from the 1994 Cajun Creole Cookbook is featured today. Although Mary Durkes of New Iberia used fresh peaches, pineapple and pears in her Frozen Fruit Salad, with the availability of canned fruit as a substitute for out of season fruit, the recipe can be prepared year around. There’s still no end to salads.
Pastas and coleslaw are topics unto themselves. A recent search on the Internet brought an article that various regions throughout the south have distinctive variations and expected traditions for slaw depending on whether it will be served with barbecue in Texas, pulled pork in Memphis or crawfish in Louisiana.
There are even cultural differences with Thai or Japanese coleslaw.
Time for Experimenting
Summer’s coming and everyone loves salads for a quick meal or light fare. For the cooks who take part in the annual cook-off and submit recipes for the Cajun Creole Cookbook, it’s time to consider what to make for this year’s competition.
At last Saturday’s Shadows-on-the-Teche, members of L’Acadien Art Guild, Margaret Melancon and Darnelle Delcambre, said it was time they started testing some new recipes. Consider now which category you might want excel in and prepare the potential award winners for family and friends.
A newcomer to New Iberia, Amy Loehndorf jumped in last year to create an Easy Beet and Orange Salad for the cook-off. Although she didn’t win, she said it was a hit with her family in the north.
Cooks from Houma and Thibodaux have expressed interest in joining the race. They seem to be determined to infiltrate the Teche Area with their award winners.