More than lettuce

By Cynthia Nelson

Hi Everyone, It is summer time and in North America and Europe it means lots of outdoor grilling and eating of lots of salads. This got me to thinking about us here in the Caribbean and our salad making and salad eating.

Often, when we think of a salad we think lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers but there is a world of salads out there that involves a lot more than crisp lettuce, cool cucumbers and juicy tomatoes.  This salad world is not a world without conflict however.  There are ongoing battles about what actually constitutes a salad. On one side are the traditionalists who demand that the word ‘salad’ only be applied to cold food, raw food in bite sized portions, dressed in salad dressing. Then there are the iconoclasts, young rebels who say that a salad can be raw or cooked, cold or hot, dressed, or…dare I say it…undressed! Are you like me right now and asking yourself, “my goodness, how involved can a salad be?”

I’m not going to get into the salad war, I think it’s futile to do so, some foods are not exacting, I believe that a salad is one of those things that is open to interpretation.

Nevertheless, here in the Caribbean our salads are often cold and sometimes at room temperature but almost never warm or hot. Our salad ambitions and expectations are simple and modest. When it’s a ‘regular’ salad we treat the slice of tomato, cucumber and lettuce leaf as a little bonus to go along with the meal. When we make and eat the potato, chicken, seafood or pasta salad, it is always as a side dish. We almost never eat salad as meal, be it as an appetizer or a main dish.

In Barbados and some other Caribbean countries, there are times when the only vegetables served with the meal come in the form of a salad.  Thus these salads become an everyday assurance to ourselves and our doctors that, yes, we are eating veg every day.  In other Caribbean territories, and certainly Guyana was like this, garden salads (lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers) were an addition to the weekend meal because weekday meals might be totally veggy, or have a lot of veg cooked with the meat, chicken or seafood. Thus, the need to have the garden salad as part of the meal to satisfy the vegetable requirement was not necessarily there.

I have a tiny confession to make. When I was a little child, whenever I heard the word ‘salad’ I automatically thought ‘lettuce.’  For some reason, in my young mind, salad equalled lettuce. Imagine my confusion one day, therefore, when my mum said that she was going to make a shrimp salad. I thought, “Wow, a shrimp salad! Mommy must be a genius or some sort of magician because she is going to turn shrimp into lettuce!” Don’t laugh! I was only a kid in single digits! Of course I’m much wiser now, and so I don’t expect to see a magic act every time I hear the words shrimp salad or even potato salad, tuna salad chicken salad or pasta salad.

What I have noticed, however, is that the pasta salad has become the rage in Guyana. When I visited last year it seemed everywhere I went people were making pasta salad. The traditional potato salad had been overthrown by the pasta salad. Personally, I still love a good potato salad. I have made one though. These days I have really warmed up to warm potato salads not just because they taste darn good, but simply because I can have a warm potato salad whenever the craving hits, it’s instantaneous. With a cold potato salad, I’d have to wait until the potatoes are cooled completely before adding mayonnaise to it and then it has to chill for a while before one can tuck in. With a warm potato salad, you add your flavourings and dressings of choice and because the potato is not cold, it absorbs the flavours even better. What I like about a warm potato salad also is that I can take it even further. I can take the leftover potato salad and I can mash it and eat it with bread, roti or a bake; I can make it into a potato-patty and pan-fry it to eat with a sour or relish, I can use it as stuffing or I can fry it and get it all crisp at the bottom and eat it with rice and pepper sauce. See the possibilities?

What is true of the potato salad I think is true of all salads — they are versatile and open to interpretation. I think that Carib-bean people are changing their views on salad in that they are beginning to see that a salad can be a complete meal. As such they have become more selective in their choice of lettuce and dressings when shopping, and the types of salad they desire when dining out. For a long time, the only variety of lettuce we produced was the green leaf lettuce, these days you can find bib, romaine, iceberg, red leaf and mixed green lettuce. When it comes to dressings, you can choose from a lemon and oil, cream, mayonnaise, vinegar, yogurt or a soy sauce based one. When dining out, apart from the popular salads such as Caesar, Chef, Cobb and Chinese Greek, one can find a main-ingredient driven salad such as a ham salad, bean salad, crab salad etc.

As a food enthusiast, I find it all fascinating and intriguing.

Cynthia
tasteslikehome@gmail.com
www.tasteslikehome.org