The other day my friend posted on Instagram about “Ram Laddoo” a street-side snack, found mostly in Delhi and north India. These are crisp-fried lentil (moong dal) pakoras, served with spicy green chutney and a finely-grated mooli or radish relish, in a simple lime juice-rock salt dressing. While the round moong dal fritters have no outstanding taste as such, except the hint of asaefotida, it is the salad dressing on top, which does the talking in this case. Crunchy, with the sharp taste of freshly grated radish oozing with moisture and the spicy green chutney adding the much-needed taste profile to an otherwise dry and, for the most part, bland fritter.
The same evening, I got to taste some superb Salad Nicoise, rustled up by French chef Alexandre Kerbouz showcasing A Journey to the Mediterranean at a fancy chef table setting in an Italian restaurant. This had Crunchy lettuce, trimmed green beans, new potatoes, anchovies sliced in halve, tuna, in its salad dressing of red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped garlic cloves.
It was followed by a Moroccan Salad, composed of boiled chickpeas, chopped cucumber-onion-tomato-green and red bell peppers, minced parsley-cilantro, in a salad dressing of lemon juice, tahini sauce. It was quite like our “Chatpata Kabuli chana salad” as a fellow foodie at the table remarked.
The flavours and freshness of ingredients in both the salads just had us chomping away merrily, reaching out for seconds until chef Alexandre politely reminded us to keep space for much more coming up.
There is that unmistakably magnetic and appealing quality about salads which make us hungry, especially if its colorful and bright. And besides the fresh, crunchy, flavor filled taste which makes you go nom-nom, are its undeniable health benefits. Gut-friendly fibre, antioxidants, essential minerals like potassium, iron and magnesium as well as carotenoids are only some of the benefits.
Nutritionists often caution weight watchers who seem to be living off salads by advising them to add good fats like an avocado slice or lean protein like chicken, eggs or fish and a bit of carbs on the side, like quinoa and brown rice doesn’t harm as your salad bowl is then a complete meal in itself.
Of course, the kind of ingredients you add make a huge difference to how good the salad will turn out for you. Topping the list are fresh, leafy greens like lettuce (Romaine, iceberg, Lollo Russo, so many varieties are now available thanks to hydroponic farming start ups), kale, arugula, mizuna , you name it. Also good to go in your salads are seeds and nuts, flaxseeds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, again extensively available in India these days. Last, but not the least, use fresh salad dressings, be it vinaigrette, or a simpler lime juice-salt one.
An important point to be noted about salads is to make them as fresh as possible, so ordering them on food delivery apps is the worst thing you can do , unless you don’t mind eating them in a soggy state. Even worse is ordering them at one of the fast food QSRs which invariably have fancy (and expensive) salads listed on the menu but the ingredients, lettuce leaves included, have been kept in cold storage. Recently, I had the unfortunate experience of ordering a salad at a pizza chain outlet and was shocked at what was passed off as salad, olives sans any taste, yellow and turning dried at the corners lettuce leaf and an apology of a salad dressing.
My all-time favourite salad is the fresh Som Tam or Thai Papaya salad, grated raw green papaya (special Thai julienne peelers are even available for shredding them finely), long beans, cherry tomatoes, Thai birds eye chillies (red) in a dressing of fish sauce, soy sauce, palm sugar and garnished with roasted peanuts, cilantro and sometimes a sprig of lemongrass. The beans, tomatoes, red birds eye chillies and garlic are hand-pounded with pestle and mortar, to keep them fresh. Aromatic, tangy-sweet-spicy this salad is a vegan’s paradise, if you skip the fish sauce for soy.
Though most Som Tam Thai Papaya salad versions are vegetarian, there are ones with dried shrimp or beef added too. What I remember on the streets of Bangkok is this salad being made and fresh in a jiffy, with the clanging sound of mortal and pestle and the aromas of the herbs teasing your nostrils.
Som Tam salads combining raw mango and prawn are also delightful as I discovered recently at a pan Asian restaurant, where the tangy notes of the thinly shredded raw mango matchsticks complemented beautifully with the freshly poached prawns, cherry tomatoes in a killer Thai dressing of kaffir lime leaves, galangal and red birds eye chillies.
I remember the joys of discovering the brimming-with-life freshness of Mediterranean salads on my visit to Doha. My favourites were the Fattoush and Tabbouleh which were always served at the beginning of the meal, which would eventually see Mezze platters and kebabs on the table. There would always be a duo of best-grade extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar placed on the table, to be poured on salads, according to one’s requirement, before even placing crockery!
I especially love Fattoush, which uses leftover pita bread, toasted ans seasoned, which is cut into crouton-sized pieces which are then added to a medley of cucumber, onion, tomatoes, radish, Romaine lettuce, fresh chopped parsley and mint in a delightful vinaigrette dressing, that is, extra virgin olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper to which a pinch of cinnamon powder and the game changer of seasonings Sumac is added.
Tabbouleh comes predominantly with chopped fresh parsley, and the rest of it is bulgur (cracked wheat, the closest we come to it in India is dalia), chopped in a simple olive oil-lime juice dressing.
Our Indian salads also do very well in the flavor and freshness department. My favourites are the Koshmibir or the Kosambari salad, which can be made with cucumber, carrots, green gram or moong dal or green gram lentils with grated coconut and a tadka or seasoning in a drop of oil, of mustard seeds, curry leaves, hing and dried red chillies. A squeeze of lime and salt a garnish of freshy roasted peanuts and you are ready to go!
Beetroot poriyal also qualifies as a great salad, eaten either warm or chilled. Beetroot diced or as you like it, steamed or raw, tossed in the same mustard-curryleaf-asafoetida seasoning, and grated coconut added along with the tadka to the beetroot. A grated beetroot salad, with curd and similar seasoning as mentioned abve is going viral as popular Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt’s beetroot salad, though it has been eaten without fuss or fanfare in south Indian households for years!