It’s almost the end of winter, which means it’s almost spring, which means it’s almost peak gardening season. The seedlings have been started, the raised beds have been plotted; there is almost nothing left to do but wait for the weather to shape up a little bit and answer one perennial question in my household: ‘what are we going to do with all this lettuce?’
To my surprise and delight, the amount of lettuce the garden produced in prime growing season (for lettuce, that’s before it gets too hot) last year was enough to make a large two-person salad everyday. Not to mention, if you don’t harvest lettuce regularly it will start to bolt and lessen in flavor, directing energy to creating flowers and seeds instead of replenishing leaves.
There are many reasonable ways to handle this problem, plant less lettuce being the most obvious, but following the logical path forward doesn’t seem very authentically me — how can I overthink this and create additional work for myself? Not to mention, I’ve come to enjoy, and dare I say expect, “free” high quality lettuce whenever I want it. Do you know how much a few heads of little gem cost? In this economy?
How can I have my goofy daily garden harvest ritual, without eating the same salad for three months straight? I’ve never been an intuitive cook / baker; I can’t walk into a room of ingredients and leave with the makings of a delicious meal. But I am very good at making systems and being creative within them — a toddler in a sandbox, we forge the chains we wear in life, etc, etc. In general I consider this to be a deficiency, but I’m also in the era of my life where I believe romanticizing a “more creative existence” is less fruitful than grappling with the reality of oneself (pretend this was articulated in a significantly more poetic way). We’re still talking about salad, I promise.
So here it is, a breakdown of the six-part salad framework I plan to be toiling within for the next several months.
The base
Last year I grew two types of lettuce: Forellenschluss and Bronze Beauty. This year I’m adding three new varieties to the mix: May Queen, Merlot, and New Fire Red. Rotating through a few different colors, textures, and flavors (it’s… quite subtle) might help keep things looking and feeling interesting. I might also do a little more bulk harvesting. Washed, spun and dried lettuce keeps a surprisingly long time in the fridge. I’m not quite on “here’s a loose bag of lettuce” terms with my new neighbors yet… but perhaps this will be the season. Eventually I’d like to get into growing chicories, but that’s feeling like a 2025 thing at this point.
The herbs
Has a salad ever changed your life? I have been to Atlanta exactly one time and had an absolutely delicious salad special at Ticonderoga Club. Yet another victim of my “off instagram era”, no photographic evidence exists, but I can paint the taste memory with great detail in my mind’s eye. This salad must have been 2 parts butter lettuce, 2 parts dill, and 1 part cheese, tossed together in a punchy sherry vinaigrette. This has kind of been the archetypical salad in my mind ever since, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The key takeaway is that I’m co-growing a few different herbs to use profusely in this, The Year of Salad. Dill, mint, basil and tarragon form the pallet I’m choosing to paint with this year (fuck parsley, sorry, not sorry). I also highly recommend celery leaves, a deeply underrated herb-like leaf.
The dressing
If the aforementioned salad kicked off my sherry vinaigrette obsession, Via Carota’s Insalata Verde solidified it. It’s by far my acid of choice, but it can get a little same-y when using it day in and day out. A typical vinaigrette ratio is 3:1 oil to acid; I tend to prefer 3:2:1 oil, acid, emulsifier.
I’m not going to lie, dressing creation is mostly vibes based, and as often as I can I outsource to Cris because it is by far my least favorite part of making a salad.
The umami
Cheese in salad is a revelation, and shouldn’t be reserved for caesars and the like. Even a small amount of pecorino, parmesan, manchego, or comté can add a really nice nutty depth of flavor. For the dairy avoidant among us at the dinner table, a bit of nutritional yeast goes a long way.
The fruits and vegetables
Radishes, radishes, radishes. Helio and watermelon radishes are some of my favorites I’m regrowing this year. I’m so hooked on this root veg (don’t get me started on the greens, pictured above sautéed with garlic) that sometimes I’ll all but skip the lettuce and do a garden radish and herb type thing.
Thinly sliced cucumber, quick pickled ribbons of shaved carrots, super ripe stone fruit, fennel, that’s it! Avocados, tomatoes, corn all have their place in salads, but not in these simple low / no shop ones. In an ideal world, everything I need to whip one of these up is coming from the garden or pantry.
The toppings
This is really where personality is defined, the frontal lobes of a salad, if you will. Without the toppings, and maybe arguably the herbs, you can have an okay to good salad together in minutes. Spending an extra beat on toppings is what takes a salad to the next level, and is always worth the added effort.
There’s a wide range of things I’d put on top of a salad, but a few perennial favorites have emerged. Fried shallots are the people’s champ — delicious, savory, textural; I go through a borderline obscene amount of these.
Korean chili threads add beautiful specks of contrast to a nice heirloom lettuce backdrop, alongside a very subtle smokey, mild heat. I love these things, I’m garnishing everything remotely appropriate with them right now.
Used sparingly, quicos add a lot of bite to what can be an otherwise delicate salad. They’re kind of heavy, so I usually add these at the very end, when salad has already been individually plated.
I almost always have pepitas, sesame seeds, furikake, sunflower seeds, dried rose petals, lightly toasted pistachios, pine nuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts on hand, for salad topping purposes and otherwise. A favorite trick with pine nuts is to roast them in butter with some smoked paprika and set aside to cool while the rest of the meal is coming together.
Some nice things (fka gift guide) for salad lovers
I stand by the aforementioned crispy shallots as a great gift, but if deep fried isn’t the vibe, may I humbly recommend1…
This garlic oil from New Mexico. I first bought it on a trip to the Santa Fe Farmers Market many moons ago, and it has since become a regular pantry staple. It is extremely pungent, and if you’re a garlic girl like me, you will love it.
This French whole grain mustard. Its got a lot of character, I wouldn’t necessarily say the cognac comes through, it just tastes like… really good, expressive mustard. It’s a tiny luxury, which is in my opinion the sweet spot of food oriented gifts. Much like the garlic oil, a little bit goes a long way.
Best salad bites
I wasn’t sure if I liked wedge salads, something about iceberg lettuce is a little triggering, but this one from Bluto’s has me fully convinced of their potential. With a “ranchziki” dressing, a series of acidic, savory, and crunchy toppings, it’s built on a light base but eats surprisingly decadent when you get an especially well distributed bite. Apparently I haven’t taken any photos in situ, but it’s even prettier when not in a takeout box.
At the risk of preemptively exposing myself as repetitive, I can assure you another dish from Rangoon Bistro is in the queue for a best bite call-out, but for now let’s focus on this Lahpet Salad. With tea leaves, shredded cabbage, fried fava beans, garlic oil and fish sauce, it’s a toothsome and umami-riddled salad, peppered with a scattering of tomatoes for a fresh counterbalance. I’ve had a decent number of different tea leaf salads in my day, a lot of them in SF(?), and this one takes the crown. This is one of two dishes I order without fail every time I’m at Rangoon, but again, let me not get ahead of myself.
I’ve recently had amazing salads at Phuket Cafe, Xiao Ye, and Ruthie’s but not enough times to know if they’re consistently available, which is a thing I try to consider in this section.
From the garden
This entire post could fit under this heading, so I’ll be brief. I finally figured out my seed starting setup (definitely meant for weed, but it’s fine), and the forbidden chocolate box has started doing its magic.
Tomatoes, peppers, some flowers, lettuce, other greens… I have a multifaceted squirrel defense plan this year, and opting for starts over direct sowing is a big part of it. Another in a series of process experiments, we’ll see what actually sticks.
There you have it, “I often make salads” in 1500 words. If you’re coming over for dinner anytime in the next three or four months, you’ll probably experience what I’m on about firsthand.
R
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