Makes: enough for 4 adults as one dish among several
Takes: 15 minutes
Grilled wild peach and lettuce salad with tamarind dressing
Ingredients
Salad
a variety of lettuces
5 wild peaches
juice of half a lemon
Small handful chopped raw pistachio nuts
1/2 block goat’s feta
few mint leaves, to garnish
Dressing
2 T tamarind pulp
2 T olive oil
juice of the other half of the lemon
1 t honey or maple syrup
1 t sumac
pepper and salt
Method
Cover the tamarind pulp in boiling water, breaking up slightly with a spoon and leave for around 10 minutes. Strain by pushing through a sieve. Retain the thick paste. Discard seeds and any flesh you can’t push through the sieve.
Meanwhile, rinse your lettuce leaves well and dry by gently spreading out and then wrapping in a tea towel (as shown), patting and then rolling, a few leaves at a time. Alternatively, use a salad spinner, removing the water by centrifugal force.
Slice peaches into thick slices, either griddle on a griddle pan on a medium heat, or roast them under the oven grill until almost collapsing. Dress with lemon juice and salt once cooked. Leave to cool slightly before using.
Make dressing with 2 T tamarind paste, 2 T good olive oil, juice of half a lemon, 1 t honey or maple syrup, 1 t sumac and pepper and salt. Shake well.
Compile salad. Layer salad leaves with chunks of feta (omit or use vegan feta if vegan), peaches, pistachio, mint leaves. Once ready to eat, dress with tamarind dressing and toss salad well.
The story behind the recipe…
The gap between a great and a terrible salad is like a gaping ravine. Salads are rarely mediocre. Either they are crisp, glorious songs that soar, or they flop, pathetically, with their slicked-back leaves and vinegary aroma.
Ordering salads when you eat out is always a game of Russian Roulette. But if you’re eating vegetarian, sometimes salad may be your only choice. I played with chance at our neighbourhood restaurant this week and ordered a watermelon salad with a chilli dressing. It sounded like it could be creative, fun. But when it came: a large bowl of chopped, uniform green cos lettuce, squares of watermelon scattered through, soaked in oil flecked with heatless chilli. That’s it. This was 11 euros, while the meaty burger and fries option was 15. Another pitfall of dining out as a vegetarian - as my sister-in-law pointed out this week. You are more often than not subsidising the meat eaters.
But I’m not really here to grouch about a bad salad. It’s just that something so bad makes you think. How has this gone so terribly wrong? Eating my pieces of watermelon and methodically munching the greens, I began to reflect on the opposite and more interesting question: what makes a salad fabulous? There was nothing wrong with the lettuce per se. It was just lettuce, it couldn’t do all the work on its own. What did it need to truly shine? Could I reduce a great salad down to its essential components?
The first thing is to have a crazy assortment of salad leaves. You can absolutely have a salad without lettuce. But if you have lettuce then you likely have a salad. The more adventurous your mix of lettuces, the better. Plain green lettuce like cos or iceberg are just fine. But they come into their own when combined with some colourful salad leaves like red oak, red cos or radicchio, beet leaves or even a speckled lettuce; something spicy like watercress or roquette; or something texturally interesting like a frilly lettuce or frissée. Think about pairing firmer, crunchier lettuces with others that are gentler and more delicate. If you can buy the lettuce in a whole head, rather than already pre-washed in a bag, all the better. Or grow your own, picking a few leaves from each plant as they will usually grow back more. If you can, think about adding a few foraged goodies like baby dandelion leaves or edible flowers such as parsley or chive flowers, calendula petals, nasturtium, or blue borage. The tiny blue stars that are blue borage flowers taste just like cucumber.
The next thing for a really wonderful salad is to think about contrasting textures. You have already have tried to mix and match your lettuce textures. Then think beyond that. Cucumber or radishes or apples for crispness; roasted vegetables or fruit for softness; nuts or seeds or croutons for crunch. That’s where the idea for grilled peaches came in this week. Already soft and velvety on the outside, they melted to softness when cooked, pairing beautifully with the more robust cos lettuce. Incidentally, we also ate grilled peaches with grilled cauliflower, roasted hazelnuts and zereshk this week, topping it with the same tamarind dressing. It was a winning combination, although the cauliflower and peaches were equally on the verge of collapse. So it is not always about a mix of textures, sometimes, complementary, exciting flavours are enough.
Whatever is in your salad, the dressing has to be fabulous. That means a good balance of sour, acidic, sweet, oil and a hint of something mysterious. Tamarind, which I’ve already used in past recipes, succeeds in almost any cooking. It is sour and has a depth of flavour that is difficult to replicate with substitutes. You can usually source the pulp at a specialty (Asian or Indian) supermarket, or sometimes you can buy jars of the sauce at the supermarket, in which case just use this directly and skip the soaking stage. Tamarind gives the salad a delicious tang. Think as well about trying different types of vinegars for your dressings, like sherry or cider, rather that always sticking with a plain white wine vinegar or lemon juice.
Finally, there’s that little something extra. Toppings like toasted nuts or seeds, dukkah, croutons, sprouts or quick-pickled onions. Proteins like chipotle chickpeas, or giant butter beans dressed in lemon juice and olive oil and mixed with lots of finely chopped parsley, or halloumi cheese, or marinated tofu. Perhaps a touch of sweetness from grilled stone fruit in summer and apple or pears in winter, chopped dates, zereshk berries, or whole dried cranberries. Or just lots and lots of chopped herbs. Alternatively, to make the salad more substantial, maybe you mix it with grains like quinoa or bulghur, wild rice or couscous. Perhaps it is that little something extra that turns the salad from something pretty good, to something really wonderful.
In the end, the wild peach salad was packed, china bowl and all, into a thick (Albert Heijn) plastic bag and strapped onto the back of my bike. We spent the weekend at the northern edge of Europe’s heat wave and so picnics were called for. Extravagant picnics with proper cutlery, rosé and iced tea, ice, cloth napkins, and real plates and glasses. Picnics where you’re longing for shade even though you’ve spent most of the year wishing for the heat and sunshine of summer. Picnics where you are grateful to have a jam jar of tangy dressing to pour over a bowl of greens. Where it takes a moment for the peaches to be recognised as a fruit, lying there in their stripes, glistening among the salad greens.
The more I write, the further I get from reducing a great salad to its component parts. The very idea of a great salad is running out of sight faster than I can pin it to the page with these letters. My definition of a salad is becoming fuzzier, more encompassing, expansive. A salad can be anything you want it to be, I say, throwing open my arms. Everyone is welcome. Even watermelon and cos, if I could just tweak the dressing a little. The wonderful thing about a salad is how much room for creativity and imagination it gives you. There are a thousand and one combinations, and all of them can be great.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes a great salad, or any favourite salad greens. Drop your thoughts in the comments section below or send me an email.
Amelia