Healthy Life Recipes
For salads it is not necessary to depend entirely upon the usual salad vegetables such as lettuce, watercress, mustard and cress.
The very finely shredded hearts of raw brussel sprouts are excellent, and even the heart of a savoy cabbage. Then the finely chopped inside sticks of a tender head of celery are very good; also young spinach leaves, dandelion leaves, endive, sorrel and young nasturtium leaves.
Then there are the onion family (for those who can take them), the tender kinds, such as spring onion, chive and shallot being very good when chopped finely and used as a minor ingredient in any salad.
The root vegetables should also be added in their season, raw carrot, turnip, beet, artichoke and leek, all finely grated.
A taste for all the above-mentioned vegetables, eaten raw, is not acquired all at once. It is best to begin by making the salad of the ingredients usually preferred and mixing in a small quantity of one or two of the new ingredients.
For those who find salads very difficult to digest, it is best to begin with French or cabbage lettuce and skinned tomatoes only, or, as an alternative, a saucerful of watercress chopped very finely, as one chops parsley.
Any salad, however made up, should be served in as dainty and pleasing a fashion as possible. It is, perhaps, usually best to serve it ready chopped and shredded, and to allow each person at the table to take his or her own helping of “dressing.”
English people seldom serve salad in the French fashion—that is, quite dry, save that the dressing is well mixed in an hour before the meal. Readers who have been to France may have seen French peasant women whirling a wire salad-basket round their heads in order to dry the materials after the cleansing has been done. When dry, the green-stuff is torn with the hands, the dressing (and the French know all about salad dressings) is added and the whole allowed to stand some little time, so that by the time the meal is served there is a complete blending of all flavours.
Not everyone likes this method; but it is certainly better than the customary method here, which too often leaves a little puddle of water at the bottom of the bowl.
There are many ways of preparing good salad dressing without resort to vinegar, salt and pepper. The two prime necessities are
(1) really good oil and
(2) some kind of fresh fruit juice.
Most people prefer lemon juice or the juice of fresh West Indian limes, well mixed into either olive oil, nut oil or a blended oil such as the “Protoid Fruit Oil” or Mapleton's Salad Oil. The ordinary “salad oils” obtainable at grocers are seldom to be recommended; they almost invariably contain chemical preservatives and other adulterants. It is better to have the best oil and use it sparingly if need be, than take any faked product just because it is cheap.
With most people the addition of pure oil assists the digestion of the salad, as well as serving other purposes in the body.
Category Article Healthy Recipes
