chunk of salad lessons

I’ve thought about salad a lot. When I was younger and adults would ask, “If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be?” I would say salad. Not because I’m obsessed with greens, a little bit because I was obsessed with vinegar, but I also knew that a salad could be many combinations of foods and I wouldn’t have to make a sacrifice even for a hypothetical moment. Like maybe salad is also a combination of different gummy fruit candies in a bowl. Many years later, there was a time it was the only food that I was really confident to make. An extremely post-Ottolenghi moment when I did not trust myself to cook a piece of meat thinking there is no way I could do justice to the life of the animal. Time’s passed and my cooking repertoire has a bit more confidence, but I still have the salad reputation amongst my friends. Which I don’t mind at all but it does make it a little intimidating to try to write about this. But a good salad is important, often the secret mortar holding a meal of more perhaps exciting foods together. Breaking up richness or offering another texture to the table. It’s also good to know salad because of the truism, “No one ever said there was too much salad or white wine at the potluck”.

The thing about salad though too, and maybe why I hadn’t been tending the flame of vegetal passion is that it’s notoriously hard to pair with wine because there is too much acidity between the salad’s dressing and your beverage. Cub and I have a joke or maybe just idea that the difficulty actually comes from the fact that wine is nourishing in the same way a green salad is and it’s really the double negative that makes it a hard pairing.

That’s one part of myself and the other part is that if you are enjoying your food and you are enjoying your wine that is a good pairing. Whenever we suggest something to eat and drink together know that we also believe this seemingly contradictory thing at exactly the same time.

Fennel salad I made for Cub's 31st bday in Ignacio Mattos' "hiding the food" style

Back to salad, presently

After 14 consecutive Greek salads on holiday this summer I learned a new lesson about what made a salad feel like a meal, which is that it is so satisfying to bite into a bigger chunk of the vegetable. The feeling of eating a hunk of cucumber is so different than the sliver circle or half moon that is usually mixed with green leaf lettuce. Bringing Greek salad home helped me get through the rest of the hot summer in Chicago, but not without feeling like the most obvious/boring tourist of all time. I had been making it a lot and I needed something fresh (both tasting and feeling, as in, new) for a lunch on the porch, especially for poor Mac who sat through a lot of those salads. In these moments I often browse Rachel Roddy’s backlog of Guardian recipes aimlessly because you see things differently when you’re in different moods. In this case I knew I was roasting a pork shoulder to serve with tonnato and wanted to make one thing on the side, which is when her recipe for Palermo salad leapt off the webpage.

Like Greek salad everything is chunked, I guess you could call it a fork and knife salad. Also like my approach to Greek salad every ingredient is treated separately, labor intensive but if you are able to give yourself enough time it is a labor of love. You can imagine the people you are feeding each component, separately and together, how the texture and intensity of flavor of each element feels. It’s fun actually. The other benefit of treating each part on its own terms is that it allows you to use produce that’s not the best most farmer’s market thing of all time and still make a good salad. More than the sum of its parts. Using this approach I will definitely make this in the winter even though it epitomizes summer in so many ways. It’s also a nice road map for some tricks you can use for other salads, the reason restaurant salads are so good is because each ingredient is prepped on its own and then combined later. Salting a tomato separately in advance can also make a pretty good BLT in the winter or spring. AKA when you might need something that feels like that.

back porch aka Palermo

I kind of think this is salad that is close to wine food, because it’s bold like the hearty fare required for drinking sessions and since you’re not dumping vinegar on top of everything the impact is much more subtle and totally in your control. There’s room for both your glass and your plate.

Palermo Salad adapted from Rachel Roddy

for 4 to 6 people depending on how much other food you are serving, you could also add tinned tuna and make this your meal

2 large potatoes

500g green beans

2 yellow peppers

1/4 red onion

4 medium tomatoes

1 handful basil leaves

Lemon

Olive oil

Red wine vinegar

1. Boil the potatoes until tender in salted water, I kind of like them to be a little over cooked.
2. When the potatoes are finished blanch the green beans in the same pot.
3. Scorch the peppers in the oven or directly on a burner. Let sit in a bowl covered in plastic wrap for 10 minutes. Once cool enough to handle remove the skin and seeds and rip the pepper into strips. Put into the bowl with a little salt, vinegar, and olive oil. Leave to marinate.
4. Slice the onion and soak it in water with a little vinegar mixed in.
5. Chop the tomatoes into rough chunks and salt them.
6. Chop the potatoes into rough chunks as well and squeeze some lemon juice over them.
7. Add the peppers, drained onion, green beans, tomatoes, and potatoes to a large bowl. Rip basil and add as well.
8. Add salt and oil to taste/coat. Let sit for 10 minutes, toss and serve with whatever wine you feel like drinking.

Some shop maintenance: we’re having a backyard party on Thursday with Motorshucker and Buen Viaje! Tickets are available here, or you can DM/email us for the address for some food & wine a la carte. New wines in the shop likely for this weekend and our shirts with a painting by Sofia Macht available too. Fall bounty looks a little different around here but we still got it:)