“Amazing salad. Quite a wonderful salad.”
“This is really nice. So what’s in it?”
“It’s rocket. I’ve seasoned it slightly. But just normal Italian rocket with a seasoning I made myself.”
“Insanely good. Definitely the best salad I’ve eaten. Is this leaf lettuce?”
“It is, yes. I’ve seasoned that too, with a completely different seasoning. As well as the leaf lettuce and the rocket, there are various types of butterhead lettuce and crisphead lettuce, iceberg lettuce mostly. The long, narrowish leaves are cos lettuce, which I grew myself in a pot. There’s also baby gem lettuce, batavia lettuce, and round lettuce, both normal and crispy-leaved, I also added a little oak leaf lettuce with serrated leaves. The colourful parts are lollo rosso. The crispiness of the leaves is midway between butterhead and crisphead lettuce. There’s also some celtuce, Lactuca sativa var. angustana.”
“This doesn’t look like ordinary lettuce.”
“That's endive there. What you’re touching now is a broad-leaved endive, an escarole. That one that’s a bit similar is called a curled endive, frisée lettuce or Cichorium endivia var. crispum. They are plants you can use in a multitude of ways; their slight hairiness is due to the intybine. They’re said to aid digestion and also to increase appetite. I seasoned both of them with a splash of vinegar. There’s also common chicory, Cichorium intybus. Originally I thought I’d gratinate it, but then I thought that given there wasn’t that much of it, it could just be served raw in the salad with the radicchio. As you noticed, there’s a bit more radicchio here, it’s the red bits there. I used two kinds, both round-leaved and pointed, because I couldn’t quite choose between them. It’s true that they do resemble one another, but there’s still a difference in the taste. I moistened the radicchio slightly with lemon, grapefruit, and blood grapefruit. Some of it is young rosettes, some mature radicchios. There’s some green radicchio in there to impart a contrasting flavour; it’s sweet-tasting. I don’t know if you’ve encountered it yet.”
“It looks like it’s got cabbage in it too.”
“There are a few cabbage species in there. There’s some normal Chinese cabbage, broccoli, savoy cabbage and cauliflower, kale, sprouts, and kohlrabi. To balance them out, I also added some more unusual and exciting flavours, from pak choi to pale cabbage and elongated mustard. Hopefully you can taste the variety. With cabbage it’s sometimes almost as if it wants to hide in the background; then again, that makes the beans stand out better. You could almost say the flavour really comes from the seasoned beans. That’s why I tried to be really precise when it came to the beans and the peas. The dark spicy ones are normal black beans spiced with chilli, but there’s also kidney beans in there. I also used normal peas and chickpeas, green beans, mung beans, adzuki beans, soya beans, peanuts, lentils, just a hint of lucerne, broad beans, and clover. Please don’t think that this was expensive at all. I pick a lot of wild herbs this time of year. And as you might have noticed, the salad contains birch, bulrush, buttercup petals, caraway, coltsfoot, common reed, fireweed, milfoil, orpine, some plantain, raspberries, red clover, rose petals, silverweed, sorrel, spear thistle, white clover, and wild strawberries. Their function is to add depth to the flavour and make the combination more interesting.”
“This is absolutely excellent.”
“Really exciting to eat. New flavours keep appearing all the time.”
“Thanks. That’s what I was aiming for, an exciting salad.”
“Even though there’s so much green in it, the cheeses taste good.”
“I tried to make the seasoning echo the flavours of the cheeses.”
“The fruit is good as well.”
“There’s all kind of fruit in this aren’t there?”
“I chose some of my favourite fruits. Hopefully they don’t taste all that watery. I didn’t dry them completely, though I did try to drain off the worst of the water. First I put in some apricot, banana and cooking banana, custard apple, kiwi, orange, pineapple, and pomegranate.
There’s also avocado, cactus pear, Cape gooseberry, carambola—also known as star fruit, chestnut, Chinese pear, coconut, golden passion fruit, granadilla, grapefruit, guava, jackfruit, kiwai, and kiwano. The recipe also includes kumquat, lime, limequat, mango, mangosteen, maracuya, melon, nectarine, papaya, pepino—also known as sweet cucumber—which I, peach, pepino—also known as sweet cucumber—which I added very sparingly, and persimmon. The more common citrus fruits are in there to provide refreshing little surprises: there’s clementine, satsuma, tangelo, bitter orange, tangor—also known as temple orange, and tangerine. To give the flavour landscape a more southern feel, I also added dates, dragon fruit, fig, pomelo, rambutan, sapodilla, salak, tangelo, tamarillo—also known as tree tomato, and vinel eaves.
Not forgetting my favourite melon, of course. Cantaloupe melon goes best with galia melon, honeydew melon, and sugar melon, but I wanted to go a bit wild so at the end I added Korean melon and watermelon as well. Hopefully you can tell all the flavours apart. Then again, I was afraid the melon would make the salad too watery. Salad's impossible to eat when it’s too watery.”
“This isn’t at all watery.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I like all the cheese. This is really nice. This must be blue-veined cheese?”
“It’s blue-veined cheese, yes, and besides that little bit of blue-veined cheese there’s some Manchego; well, actually I’m not too sure. It might be Gorgonzola I added at the very last minute. I can’t see that far. Hopefully it’s nice too.
“Oh, it is. There’s lots of different cheeses as well. Two pieces might look alike, but taste completely different.”
“I also put in some more common kinds of cheese. As usual, I decided to go for Italian cheese again. So the salad has Bel Paese, Bitto, Caprino, Fontina, Grana Padano, mozzarella, parmesan, pecorino, ricotta, Robiola, Taleggio, and Toma. I also added feta, halloumi, Brie, Camembert, Morbier, Port Salut, and Roquefort. I also like the French ones, of course. But there’s a dark side to me, because if you taste carefully, you’ll also notice some English cheeses in the salad. They might be surprising initially, but I do think they’re really very good. I put in Cheddar, Cheshire, Gloucester, Shropshire Blue, Stilton and Wensleydale. From Holland there’s also Edam, Gouda, Maaslander, and Verkeerskaas. I must confess I practically worship the taste of them. Finnish squeaky cheese—leipäjuusto—and creamy cheese especially is really underrated, basically because it’s so common. A good gouda is a king among cheeses though. Northern Europeans never really appreciate what they make themselves, and Eastern Europeans aren’t much better. That’s why I added a dash of Polish colour: Oscypek, Bundz, Bryndza, Redykołka, and Rokpol. They all have interesting flavours and go well together. Of course the salad also has the Finnish squeaky cheese—leipäjuusto—and creamy cheese, geitost, brunost, Jarlsberg and gamalost, Appenzeller, Emmental, Gruyère, and raclette. I was trying to create a palette of cheeses that was different yet unassuming.”
“This is really nice.”
“The chicken goes really well with this, so does the duck.”
“Actually that’s not duck, it’s willow grouse. I used birds much more sparingly; I tried to concentrate on the simple game, poultry with flavours that would be sure to go well together. I put in a little hazel hen and willow grouse, as well as some ptarmigan breast slices, black grouse, and capercaillie. Mostly capercaillie. It's got a rugged kind of flavour, as if you were eating it in a scenic forest landscape. Capercaillie has such a perfect flavour I could almost cry when I taste it. I didn’t put in any other meat though. I did consider putting in some bear meat originally, but then I thought that might be overdoing things. Hopefully the lack of it doesn’t affect the taste too badly. I’m a little sorry for not putting in more meat, even if it is a salad.”
“There’s nothing missing from this.”
“Not at all. You must have told us all the ingredients now.”
“Well if you really want to know, then I did add some ingredients I found in the garden as well, like sand rock cress, hoary cress, purple mustard, scurvy grass, lundy cabbage, goosefoot, swinecress, sea kale, toothwort, tansy mustard, sand rocket, whitlow grass, ribwort, wallflower, Syrian mustard, black radish, shepherd’s purse, and Alpine pennycress. I think that’s all.”
“Unbelievable that a salad could be so varied. I’m not even going to dare ask how you seasoned all that.”
“This is great. This really is excellent, no two ways about it.”
“Thanks everyone. I made the dressing myself from scratch, but I’m not keeping the recipe a secret. It was much simpler than the salad. When it comes to dressing, I’ve always thought that simple is beautiful and beautiful is good.”
“This is a fantastic salad. And the dressing is excellent as well.”
“It is. This is a fantastic, fantastic salad.”
