Salad

I went for a bike ride along Cross-Island Parkway, which is very close to my new place. Near the end of my ride I passed one of those little vegetable markets that are commonly found in NY (and maybe other cities, I don't know) and bought some items for dinner. Not much to it, really:

1/2 cup chopped fennel (leaf not seeds)
1/4 cup white onion, sliced
1/2 cup cucumbers
6 grape tomatoes
4 radishes, sliced
1 tbsp prepared Dijon mustard
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
juice of half a lime
sea salt and black pepper, to taste
1 tsp dried tarragon leaves

Whisk the mustard, vinegar olive oil and lime juice together in a bowl. Add the vegetables and toss to combine.

Very simple and quick. You could add all sorts of things to it but I'd make sure to take out if you're doing that---the point is to be simple.

Apropos the summer cooking post and thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?em

At the end of June, I asked you all for your summer food suggestions. Here's the round-up (plus a few extra):

1. Salads
   We can move beyond typical salads (lettuce drenched in dressing) to look at chopped salads, bean salads, fruit salads (sweet or savory), potato salads, and pasta salads. Some of these can be made in large quantities that will keep for a while. Salads can easily become a main course, and they don't need to be raw. Quickly seared (or grilled) meats and vegetables work well for making a hearty entree salad. If they cook quickly, it isn't going to get too hot.
2. Grilling
   Yes, your grill gets very hot... but it is outside and shouldn't heat your house up. There's a reason we like to grill in the summer.
3. Stews and Braises
   Crimfan notes that a crockpot won't really heat up your kitchen. I'll expand that to include all sorts of low-and-slow cooking. We normally think of braises and stews as cold weather food, but (particularly if you skip the pile of root vegetables) they can certainly work in the summer as well. Think chili. A rice cooker is another tool that works well in the summer.
4. Raw, Fermented, or Cured Foods
   Consider meals that don't require cooking at all: bread, cheese, and fruit is a classic. Gazpacho. Sashimi. Carpaccio. Salamis. Pickled vegetables. Yogurt. There are many options.
5. Dips
   Thick tzaziki. Hummus. Babaganouj. Add something to dip such as raw vegetable, bread, or tortilla chips. Olives and cheeses might be appropriate as well. Also consider raitas, chutneys, salsas, guacamole...
6. Lessons from this past weekend
   When we were in South Carolina last weekend, my brother's best friend's wife and her mother (who are Guatemalan) made a ceviche variant. The end result was a gazpacho-like mix of chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro with cooked shrimp. A quick and dirty way of approximating this would be to take a mild salsa, add some fresh cilantro (and maybe a can of diced tomatoes), and some precooked shrimp (or uncooked shrimp that you've marinated in lime juice and/or vinegar). They served it with crackers, but a thin-sliced baguette would have been even better. You can easily substitute (or add) other sorts of seafood.

   We also had plenty of bagels this past weekend. I think my parents brought over 4 dozen bagels with them (for six people over about four days). Bagels with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and sliced onion and tomato is a classic. Variations are easy: add capers, substitute smoked trout for the salmon, try sliced/grilled vegetables with a bit of olive oil...

Learned this one from my stepmom but I like more "intense" flavors than she does (or most people do for that matter) so I turned it up to 11.

Tarragon Mustard Salad Dressing

1/4 cup (+a little) white wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup prepared mustard (dijon, yellow, spicy, whatever)
generous grind black pepper
1/4 tsp sea salt
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 tbsp dried tarragon

Whisk to combine in a bowl. Transfer to a jar and let stand for at least a few hours. Keeps for a week or two.

Not only does the mustard add flavor, it also helps hold the salad dressing together so the wine and oil don't separate because it's an emulsifier.

The general principle can be altered. You want less acidity? Use a milder vinegar and/or add a little sugar. You want different herbs? Just switch. In a nutshell, pick an herb (tarragon, basil, cilantro, etc.), an oil (olive, walnut, etc.), an acid (lemon or lime juice, vinegar), an emulsifier (mustard, egg), an added ingredient (garlic and shallots, finely chopped dried fruit, etc.), pepper and salt. Mix and go.

A favorite salad to use this with:

2 kirby cucumbers, sliced
a dozen grape tomatoes (roasted or not)
some white onion, sliced thin
feta or sirene cheese, crumbled
salt, pepper to taste

Mix to combine. This is good with fennel and radish or daikon, too.

Image by Arnold Gatilao (http://inuyaki.com)I like the idea of chopped salads. I really do. They're like solid soup: all the ingredients are blended together.

That may not have been the best comparison.

Anyway, I like the idea of chopped salads. I occasionally make things that might be considered chopped salads. This spring, I've been making a bunch of vinegared salads using some combination of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, onions, carrots, and garlic. Still, I almost never order them in restaurants. When I do, I'm usually disappointed.

I was reading about chopped salads in The Kitchn when I realized why: they use iceberg lettuce.

I really don't like iceberg lettuce. I barely consider it a food. I tend not to use lettuce at all at home. On rare occasions, I will pick up some mixed greens, but when I want something green and leafy I will almost always turn to spinach or cabbage. Still, iceberg lettuce retains some structural integrity when chopped, which makes it a recommended choice for chopped salads. The article I was reading recommended endive as another option, and cabbage would clearly work well also.

What do you look for in salad hardware?