In a Bowl
“The essence of a good salad is simplicity: clean, bright flavors that, when brought together, bring out the best in one another”
Chuck Williams
It’s funny how the snippet of a song, an aroma or an object can elicit a distinct memory. That memory in turn triggers a series of images and suddenly you’re plunged down the rabbit hole of reminiscences.
Seeing my mum’s salad bowl in her kitchen recently did just that. It’s a large, well-used, well-loved olive wood bowl, its patina rich and deep in color that has developed since my parents received it as a wedding present in 1961. I thought about all the houses that bowl has lived in, all the meals it’s been present at. If bowls could talk, that bowl could tell you a story or two!
It stood pride of place in the middle of her extravagant multi-course dinner parties and was always present on our Sunday lunch table, filled with bright green, carefully washed and prepared greens. I’d spy it sitting on the counter, vinaigrette made, the salad waiting to be tossed. It was rarely used for anything other than a green salad, but that’s where my love affair with all things salad began. All these thoughts flashed through my mind as I watched her make a salad for us in the very same bowl.
I realized that we didn’t really make mixed salads, other than a salade niçoise or perhaps an endives-Roquefort-walnut salad when I was growing up. Salads were invariably green, perhaps with a few herbs (mostly parsley) and chives, and always served after the main course as a light, refreshing, cleansing interlude, before cheese and/or dessert.
It wasn’t until I moved to California that I discovered a different type of salad altogether, and the idea that one could be served as a main course. When I arrived in Los Angeles, I ate the (now famous) grilled vegetable salad at The Ivy. It was a deliciously succulent revelation, filled with warm grilled zucchini, corn, butter lettuce, little tomatoes and a lime vinaigrette. It was abundant and satisfying. I discovered chopped salads, chef’s salads, Caesar salads with grilled chicken or salmon, kale and avocado salads, Waldorf salad, and green goddess and thousand island dressing. This was a whole new world of salad, and I was smitten.
I started experimenting with different vegetables, then added assorted fruit (something the French side of my family still finds weird) to my salads. The abundance of extraordinary stone fruit, herbs and mixed greens at the farmers markets are not just a feast for the eyes, but also for the palate. Combine ripe, juicy heirloom tomatoes with sliced white peaches, some fresh mint and basil and a drizzle of lemon vinaigrette, for example, and you have the taste of late summer in every mouthful. The possibilities, I realized, were endless—particularly in late summer, when the last thing anyone wants to do is spend hours cooking in a hot kitchen.
British food writer Elizabeth David once wrote, “Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of a fleeting moment.” I am reminded of this comment every time I eat a perfectly ripe Tuscan melon, its sweet perfume lingering in the air, or bite into rich, juicy tomato, or a lusciously soft fig. Little plump cherries and cherry tomatoes are, I discovered, perfect complements to each other but they only coexist for a few short weeks each year when they are both at the acme. This is the essence of the season, and how better to capture this than to serve it up, in all its freshness, in one’s favorite vessel. This is uncomplicated food that celebrates the season.
My cooking strategy now consists of grabbing a few of my favorite bowls and platters and filling them with an assortment of salads. This is the perfect recipe for impromptu lunches and dinners. I try to include one dish that has a warm element in it such as grilled vegetables, to use a variety of textures (crunchy crisp salads as well softer green salads) and perhaps add a protein to one of them, such as a smoked fish, eggs, quinoa, chickpeas or lentils. There are few meals I like more than a table covered with an assortment of gorgeous dishes, including (as I cannot stray too far away from my roots) a green salad, served in a big wooden bowl, with lots of herbs too!
