On any given Sunday...

In the sports world, the phrase "on any given Sunday..." implies that the outcome of the game might -- and often does -- turn out considerably different than what you expect.  Anything can happen. On paper, one team might have an overwhelming edge, or the home field advantage, but truly, you never know who will show up, who's got the drive or the desire to win until the game is played. The world is not so predictable that you can just phone it in. The Sunday salad has all characteristics of a late-season football game played in the rain, that turns to snow, then settles on sleet and ice pellets in a swirling wind. Who's going to win?  Hey, it's anyone's guess.

Suppose that on Friday evening, you stayed a few extra hours at happy hour.  On Saturday, you were surprised to find that there were several movies playing that you wanted to see, and you took in a double feature. You didn't get to the store to replenish your salad supplies. When you amble into the kitchen to build the Sunday salad, suddenly you've become TV's Macgyver, trying to build a salad with a rubber band, a straw, some leftover greens, assorted fruit, and a hard-boiled egg.  

Most of the time, these are the very conditions that call for salad greatness.  You have to dig deep, figuring out how to use what you have to make a salad that just might become the next surprisingly great salad of your life. The red Bartlett pear and bell pepper salad we had this past Sunday was just such a revelation. Simple, colorful, flavorful, and a base worth building on...

The big payoff...

If you read this blog regularly, you might get the idea that we eat nothing but leafy greens, exotic fruit and vegetables, and press our own garden-grown olives into world-class olive oil. This is not really the case. A salad can be the first course that represents the beginning of a great meal.  It can also be the light fare that serves as the precursor to a great dessert. At times, the salad is a means to an end; it's a fantastic journey that leads to a much-deserved reward. For us, it is often the prelude to chocolate.

A few years ago, we discovered Paul Newman's Sweet Dark chocolate. We were never huge fans of dark chocolate, but Newman's chocolate, like his acting, was smooth, wonderful, and never bitter or over-the-top. At first, Newman's sweet dark chocolate was the perfect compliment to a glass of red wine after dinner, but eventually, we found ourselves finishing every meal (except the occasional early breakfast) with a square or two of chocolate. Newman opened the door to other dark chocolates for us, although we are still a little hesitant about saying "yes" to the bitter, heavy cocoa-laden blends.  

There is such a wide range of chocolate out there that we suggest you make a project out of it, just like the pursuit of building the perfect salad. Next time you're at the grocery or your favorite chocolatier, buy several types of chocolate and have a tasting, as if you're enjoying a flight of expensive Bordeaux wines. Yes, you should savor and enjoy your salads, but it's great to finish it with something that you absolutely love to eat, that satisfies your craving for the sweet and the rich. If you haven't tried Newman's sweet dark chocolate after a good salad, we highly recommend it...

Tomatoes with flavor

Every year, around the marking of the vernal equinox, my friend Mike slathers on his SPF 110 and digs up his yard to plant tomatoes.  This is not the trivial undertaking of a casual hobbyist or the relaxing pursuit of a gentleman farmer. No sir. Raising tomatoes in Austin, Texas is all-out warfare against a relentless sun, against bleached soil that hasn't seen rain in months, and against the unwavering heat. It takes a serious man and a hearty tomato pedigree to yield edible results. 

We've had the good fortune of tending to Mike's garden when he takes his family on vacation, and the reward for weeding and irrigating is everything we can pick. This is a rare treat, given that we live in an era of tasteless tomatoes. Mike's yield lasts for a few weeks.  Then, when the days of living on garden-fresh tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh cracked pepper give way to the desperate search for a tomato with flavor, where does one go to add the real thing to a salad. We have found that the only store-bought tomato that delivers any semblance of flavor is the cherry tomato.  While these little guys are no substitute for a fresh-picked tomato from the garden, still warm from the heat of the afternoon, it's the best we've got.

Vegas, baby...

Years ago, we found ourselves in Las Vegas, stopping there on our way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  Vegas has never been a travel destination for us in itself.  We've been there for conferences, or to meet people while on our way to some other place.  The interesting thing about Las Vegas is that it's a great food town.  Almost every serious meal we've had there was superb.  I never associated Las Vegas with great food because when my parents started traveling to Vegas for vacations in the 70s, they would always talk about getting a steak dinner for 99 cents, or breakfast for free.  I thought to myself: "How good can this food be if they're giving it away?"

However, we found ourselves at The Grotto restaurant in the Golden Nugget hotel, and the house salad featured one of our all-time favorite salad ingredients: Hearts of Palm.  At the time, we'd been serving hearts of palm as an appetizer with a spicy mustard vinaigrette, but never as the main ingredient in a salad. The Grotto salad included red bell peppers, scallions, and tomato, tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  It was brilliant. Since that experience, we are firmly committed to adding hearts of palm to almost every salad we make, and it is the main ingredient in many of our Sunday salads.

The house salad

Across from the Vancouver Museum of Art, there is a little nondescript bistro called The Bellagio. Unlike its over-the-top cousin in Las Vegas, you could walk past this little establishment and not have any sense of the greatness that awaits you inside. On a rainy afternoon, in late December, we happened into this place and ordered lunch. Truthfully speaking, we don't remember the entrees that we ordered.  The true revelation was the house salad. It was magnificent. There wasn't very much to it -- mostly just spring mix -- but the dressing was simply unbelievable. We made such a fuss over it that our unflappable waitress asked the chef to write it down for us. The ingredients are:

• Olive oil
• Fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• Basil
• Salt
• Pepper
• A splash of balsamic vinegar

Since that day, we have been wrestling with the proportions of these ingredients with the passion of medieval alchemists, trying to recreate that salad. It was light, flavorful, and it seemed to invite you into the garden from which all good things come. We have yet to make that exact salad, but every attempt at it is a revelation in itself.

The Sunday salad

On Sunday, lunch usually occurs around 3:30 p.m, give or take an hour. It is our big meal of the day, and while you'd think that the salad would be our most creative, often, it's not. Interestingly, the Sunday salad is a salute to anold favorite, depending on what's in season. For example, when Seckal pears are in abundance at the local grocery, our Sunday salad will certainly feature thinly sliced wedges of these little gems.

This week, the Sunday salad was one of the regulars. Here's the lineup:

• Organic spring mix of red and green romaine, green oak, lolla rossa, baby spinach, red chard, arugula, and beet tops
• Marinated artichoke hearts
• Cherry tomatoes
• Sliced red seedless grapes
• Blueberries
• Sea salt
• Oregano
• Basil
• Ground pepper

The salad is tossed with Italian red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Once on the plate, it is sprinkled with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The meal becomes a true feast when complimented by rolled cold cuts of parmesan-pesto ham and toasted Tandoori naan. Take your time, pop in an old favorite movie, pour some good wine and savor a great salad on your day of rest.

Too much stuff...

It could be suggested that a salad is as personal as a signature, and that no two salad makers will craft exactly the same dish. However, this argument seems to break down when I consider the old standard salad of iceberg lettuce. Moreover, throw in the impact of ranch dressing on any food -- particularly a salad -- and the salad becomes a delivery system for the flavors of ranch dressing. Not that there's anything wrong with iceberg lettuce or ranch dressing. But some ingredients can suppress the flavor of the others to force consistency.

Our salads feature parings of fruit and vegetables, punctuated by in interesting medley of greens. The spring mix serves as the base, but it is not the dominant ingredient. In fact, we have a dear friend who once opined that we put "too much stuff" in our salads.  I think this comment stems from the fact that a salad is commonly thought of as mostly lettuce (or greens) with a choice of dressing.  We approach the salad from a different point of view.

Lately we've been using artichoke hearts as the main ingredient, supported by blueberries, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and pecans. Interestingly, this salad can taste different every day, depending on the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and spices that we add to it. In addition, the artichoke hearts themselves can taste different by the batch, which makes the first few bites of the salad an adventure at every serving. 

In Praise of Spring Mix

I never liked salads. In my lifetime, I've choked down countless servings of iceberg lettuce coated with Wesson oil and generic vinegar -- only to feel as if I didn't eat anything closely resembling food. Throw in a tasteless tomato slice or a wedge of cucumber, and that my friends, was the salad.

But then, stores started carrying spring mix, that lively combination of greens that inspires committed salad haters to buy the most expensive extra virgin (first cold pressed) olive oil and Italian balsamic vinegar. Is it the arugula? The fresh spinach leaves? Or is it the chopped romaine that causes an irresistable desire to add currants or walnuts to the medley of flavors? It's hard to say, but we're going to discuss it in this blog. Welcome to salad du jour.