Salad days

When I started writing this post it looks decidedly unlike summer. The rain had been pouring half the morning and the skies were a grim mottled grey. That it’s warm while raining, though, gives away the fact that it is surely the good old British summer. The increasing temperatures have meant moving away from my winter soups and trying to get creative with cold lunches.

Last winter was one of the hardest in the UK for years. It was a pleasure, therefore, to make soup every week, as there’s something comforting about a bowl of hot soup when it is freezing outside. Soups are also a handy way of getting an additional portion or two of vegetables into the daily diet. They were abandoned, however, when the heat ramped up suddenly and the UK launched apace into one of the driest springs on record.

For cold lunches the options pretty much come down to salad or sandwiches. Although within those categories the sub-options might be myriad, I never feel the latter offers much chance to keep up the midday vegetable fix. Additionally, I’m partial to toast for breakfast, so prefer to avoid a second bread-laden meal on too many days. So, we took up the salad challenge.

The concept of salad in the UK seems to have shifted during my lifetime. In my memory the salad of the 1970s comprised round or iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and a variety of mayonnaise-slathered temperate-climate vegetables, such as potatoes, cabbage, carrots and peas. Things remained fairly similar throughout my teenage years except that little gem (baby Romaine/Cos) lettuces became ridiculously popular. From my early adulthood onwards, though, the diversity developed until many varieties¸ such as Romaine endive/chicory, frisée, radicchio, lollo rosso, rocket, chard, lamb’s lettuce, watercress, spinach, have become widely available, and all we have to do is grab a bag on the way home.

In restaurants I’ve noticed changes too. In the 1970s and 1980s, I only remember salad being used to any great extent in starters - a few lettuce leaves under prawn cocktail, the garnish on the side of a plate, or perhaps even a mixed salad as a starter in its own right. Salads have, however, ascended to the role of main course, especially Caesar salad and salade Niçoise. Most versions, though, seem unworthy of this accolade as they are nearly all leaf couple with only a smattering of the more-expensive protein ingredient ­– two if you’re lucky. On the plus side, though, salads have become more adventurous. I recently had a beautiful smoked duck, walnut, pear and blue cheese salad as a starter.

At the other end of the scale, anywhere you can buy pre-packed sandwiches these days you can buy pre-made salads. The cheaper ones contain mainly pasta, with lots of sauce or mayonnaise, which keeps the price down and the full-belly feeling up. Those that do feature the more-traditional salad vegetables can cost a small fortune for a small sized portion with a narrow range of ingredients, and frequently seem rather unsatisfying.

Our homemade salad lunches fall somewhere pleasantly between these points on the spectrum. They have something of a retro feel because the leaf constituent is pretty simple – generally iceberg or Romaine – but this is only a small part of the whole. We use a range of ingredients to achieve a lot of flavour, colour and texture and to provide a balance of fibre, protein, fat, carbohydrate etc. Thus, as well as vegetables, we include a few spoonfuls of a pulse and a protein item, such as cold cooked meat or a slice of quiche. Anything that is pleasant cold is probably fair game, really. Enhancements have included a mustard vinaigrette (3 parts extra virgin olive oil to 1 part red wine vinegar, a good pinch of sugar and Dijon mustard to taste), noodles with a soy sauce dressing and chopped fresh chillies, and a curried mayonnaise or yoghurt dressing for the chicken.

The salads fit neatly into an average sized sandwich box, which makes them ideal for the delectable Mr M to take to work. I’m hopeful that there’s plenty of warm weather still to come so we can come up with new salad ideas, but whatever happens I won’t be going down the route of ‘posh’ gastro-pub-like salads. They’re just not my style!

 Basic salad with mustard vinaigrette and noodle salad with soy sauce dressing