Section:GDN 12 PaGe:7 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 17:22 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian
Thursday 15 August 2019 7
I had a conversation once
with the very urbane chef and pioneer
of the contemporary British food
scene, Rowley Leigh. He didn’t
understand salads, he said, now that
people had started putting things
like meat in them. I disagreed: it is
wonderful to fi nd meat in a salad, a
windfall, a gift from the universe,
like putting your winter coat on for
the fi rst time that season and fi nding
a tenner.
Anyway, I only name-drop
because salad is quite an interesting
waypoint in the evolution of cuisine:
there is a purist old guard who can
innovate like crazy within a dish,
but likes to maintain categories as
they have always been – salads with
the emphasis on “side”, centrepiece
dishes rather than small plates.
And then there is a modern wave,
which likes to throw everything into
the same dish, so anything can be
a salad, so long as it’s not hot. And
even if it is, they will sometimes call
it a “warm salad”. I can see the merit
in both sides, but am going to come
down on the second.
I don’t want to linger on the meat
salad because, long term, it is my
sworn intent to stop eating meat. But
just in the meantime, the all-time
best, all-year-round, are: the duckMy quest for the
perfect salad
Zoe Williams
PHOTOGRAPHS: LINDA NYLIND/THE GUARDIAN; DAVID GRIFFEN; CHRISTOPHER THOMOND/THE GUARDIAN
Parmesan works
with everything,
whereas feta is
like an awkward
adolescent that
keeps falling out
with everyone
millennial salad-entrepreneurs –
I’m talking about McFadden again,
really – have beefed them up (not
with beef !), and the broad trend now
is for a salad to be more like an actual
meal. He divides the year into six
seasons rather than four (the adds
are early summer and late summer )
and typically builds a salad around
a core vegetable. He then chucks so
much ancillary protein and fl avour
at it that it’s like a brass band made
of food : celery, sausage, provolone,
olives and pickled pepper salad; raw
corn with walnuts, mint and chilli s;
raw brussels sprouts with anchovy,
lemon and pecorino (he does other
things beside salad; it’s just the
salads that I happen to love ).
If you’re prepared to discard
rawness from your salad criteria, you
open up to the world of the blanched
or roasted vegetable. Green beans are
peculiarly versatile, and peppers are
very attractive, but I like that mystery
of the vegetable that is a bit boring
when hot and becomes exponentially
more delicious as it cools down;
the cherry tomato, the butternut
squash, the charred courgette.
The ultimate salad cheese is feta,
not parmesan; parmesan works
with everything, whereas feta is
like an awkward adolescent that
keeps falling out with everyone,
until it fi nally fi nds a youth club
(cucumbers) where it can really be
itself. I don’t think I’ve ever had a
caper and thought “they shouldn’t
have put this caper in” , nor an olive ,
nor any fl at-leaf parsley. Conversely,
if anyone puts a nasturtium, or
a peach, or any rosewater on my
salad plate, to adapt the martial arts
aphorism, if they could see on my
face what I feel in my heart, nobody
would ever do that twice.
To return to those traditionalists:
what if you want just leaves, some
wholesome, winsome leaves, on
their own, with no mucking about?
I would countenance most leaves
except frisée chicory, which is bitter
and looks like a librarian who hasn’t
brushed their hair. Oh, sorry, and
iceberg lettuce, which I’m nothing
like as snobby about as most of
the world, but it has to be served
quartered and smothered in blue
cheese dressing – that’s not a salad,
it’s more of a fun gimmick.
Otherwise, take some leaves – my
all-time favourite is the butter lettuce,
fl oppy and a bit nostalgic, the kind of
thing Peter Rabbit would steal – and
dress them in oil and vinegar mixed
with salt and garlic that have been
pounded in a 1:1 ratio. Perplexingly,
this will feel like too much salt and too
much garlic. It is an incredibly poky
and moreish salad, which is delicious
against anything – bread, ham,
cheese, other vegetables, genuinely
anything and sometimes makes
people cough, but I don’t mind that.Side dish or main? Opinions are divided
but I like to throw everything on the plate,
like a brass band made of food
salad in the Ivy (pictured above) , for
which I will waive my no-fruit-in-
a-savoury-thing salad rule ; a roast
chicken, fl at-leaf parsley and lemon
salad, for which you slice lemons
vertically, like mandarin segments ; a
bacon and egg salad with asparagus,
garlic chives and pea shoots, by the
current king of salads, the American
cook Joshua McFadden; and the
Vietnamese chicken and cabbage
salad, for which Andrea Nguyen has
a stunning recipe (this doubles as the
best low-calorie, low-carb, low-fat,
low-everything-except-salt salad).
Salads have historically been
associated with self-denial, which
is not quite right – you can joylessly
squeeze a lime over some leaves,
but that’s not really a salad, that’s
more of a garnish of self-hate. A
properly dressed salad is no more
abstemious than anything else. Butas he is to soak up knowledge and
experience: “I don’t want to let
anyone down, on one hand, and on
the other everything’s like a dream.
I’ve gone from washing dishes to
working on the grill, and the pass
[running the order system and
overseeing the dishes going out to
waiting staff ]. My life’s evolved so
much in such a short time.” Adams
describes himself as “a good person
who made a huge mistake and paid
the consequences”. H e spent time in
prison and c ame out with substance
abuse issues, but says: “Beyond Food
gave me a second chance in life.”
The trainees are also unusually
well qualifi ed for the challenge;
Brigade is run as a serious operation- “we haven’t opened up a back
street caff : they’re working in an
amazing restaurant,” Boyle points
out. In a refurbishment last year,
he decided on charcoal grills and
wood-burning ovens: “We’ve just
got the one gas stove now”. Cooking
over fi re is “a great skill to teach
apprentices” and sets the restaurant
apart from others in the vicinity. “ We
needed to off er something diff erent.
We can’t aff ord to hide behind our
social enterprise status.”
His team will be relying on a
wood-smoked, marinated goat
dish at Meatopia , part of a menu
rather more eclectic than one might
expect from a meat feast, albeit an
avowedly sustainable one. “Back in
2013, you could stick some pulled
pork in a bun and that was a dish - now it’s a bit more complicated,
more chefs have got involved with
fi re, and they’re creatives, they’re
artists,” Kemp muses. “If we fi lled
the place with burgers and prime rib,
we’d probably make more money,
but I’d like to think we’ve made
people more adventurous.” To this
end, alongside the brisket and grilled
oysters, there will be someone doing
slow-cooked tendon, “really soft
and glutinous” , tacos stuff ed with ox
tongue, haggis and bone marrow, and
even the sausages will be fermented.
Kemp says the atmosphere they
are aiming for at Meatopia is that of
a barbecue with some mates who
are really good cooks, where there
is a bit of music and someone who
brings great beer – “just a load of
happy people, basically”. Boyle,
meanwhile, describes the trainees as
some of the most positive, optimistic
people you’ll ever meet. “It’s a gift, in
many ways, working with homeless
people. They’ve lost so much in their
life, they are just thrilled to be here.”
The two do indeed sound like they
will go together like, well, meat and
fi re. Which is handy, because ...
Trainees Nigel
Adams, left,
and Andrew
Cannon. Below,
lambchops at
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