Every so often common sense tells us that salads are good for us so very often we make a resolution to eat and to feed the family a ‘big bowl of salad’ and to eat less ‘junk’. Eaten fresh, salads have naturally occurring plant enzymes that assist your body in digestion. 

Unfortunately the resolution tends to move from the cucumber and carrot sticks to some mixture of insipid iceberg lettuce, some slices of tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers all mixed up with some salt pepper and lemon. Not so surprisingly, bitter complaints of ‘why are you feeding us rabbit foot’ pretty much guarantees that the salad experiments die a natural death. It hasn’t helped that the variety of salads available locally used to be quite limited so most foreign recipes would seem rather daunting.

But it doesn’t have to be all insipid and tasteless – salads are actually a great option to combine vegetables, fruits and proteins in a way that’s healthy and interesting. There are multiple ways to mix and match flavours, textures and colours to actually land up with a hearty meal.

For the base forget about the common classic iceberg lettuce and desi harra patta – today, you are actually spoilt for choice – purple cabbage, arugula, pak choy, lollo rosso, endives, romaine, fennel are all in the market to make a great base. These greens especially the dark leafy ones are filled with folate, Vitamin A and plenty of antioxidants.

Flash up the salad and make it look really appetizing by adding fruits – I have been using pears, watermelon, orange, apples and strawberries with some extraordinary results in colour, flavour and texture. These salads are particularly great on the eye.

Add some nuts or some baked tortilla chips and you have crunch. While nuts are considered high in fat, it’s actually the healthy unsaturated fats so throw a few walnuts or pine nuts in. The bottom line is that to retain salads in your daily diet and enjoy them, they need to tickle your palate so you move away from the ‘I should eat salad’ obligation to a ‘I love my salads’. And its just not that complicated. You just need to be a bit creative.

Here are two current hot favourites in my family. Most of us don’t imagine using raw spinach in our food nor do we consider fruits a salad so these are really off the beaten track. A salad meal that’s working particularly well is one I adapted from Alton Browns recipe.

Warm Spinach and Bacon Salad

1 bundle of spinach. While baby spinach is not available in India try and get the smallest leaves as these can be used raw. The larger leaves can be a bit bitter and don’t come out well in a salad.

5 slides of chicken bacon chopped – locally available Al-farms chicken bacon is much healthier with no fat and made of white meat. Of course on a night you want to indulge use real bacon – it takes the recipe into another level.

• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 2 boiled eggs with the yolks removed and chopped.
• 1 medium red onion chopped finely
• Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the stems from the spinach and wash thoroughly and place in the salad seving bowl.

Fry the bacon in spoon of olive oil. Since it is chicken bacon it has very little fat so a dash of oil is required. Set the bacon aside in a small bowl.

To make the dressing pour red wine vinegar, honey and mustard in a bowl and mix well with the salt and pepper.

In the same pan toss the onion in a tablespoon of olive oil for a minute, then whisk in the dressing and stir for a minute and add the cooked bacon and stir for another minute. Pour the hot mixture on the spinach bed and top with the chopped egg. Serve immediately.

The warm mixture will wilt the spinach naturally. It’s best served immediately and with a piece of whole wheat bread it is almost a meal by itself.

Watermelon, Feta and Black Olive salad

• 1 small red onion cut into fine half moons
• Juice of 3 lemons
• ½ a large sweet, ripe watermelon
• 100g feta cheese
• 1 small bunch fresh coriander (this original recipe called for parsley but coriander works perfectly fine)
• 1 small bunch finely chopped fresh mint
• 3–4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 50 gms pitted black olives
• Crushed fresh black pepper

Put the onion in a small bowl with the lime juice – in a few minutes it will turn transparent diminish the bitterness.

Remove the pips and cut the watermelons into triangular chunks. For a party I often use scoop little balls with a melon balller, which makes this quite a showstopper. If you have the time to do this then it really makes it look cool expect you need a much larger quantity of watermelon as there is a fair amount of wastage.

Crumble the feta and put both items in a large salad bowl.

Throw the parsley / coriander in sprigs rather than chopped so it looks like a salad leaf as well as the chopped mint.

Add the onion mixture over the salad in the bowl, add the olive oil and pitted olives and then lightly massage the salad with your hands very gently to mix it all together. This is important or the watermelon will crumble. Crush some fresh pepper and serve cold. You can make this up to two hours ahead. Much earlier and the watermelon becomes too watery. 

Pic: typofi