Dinner Salad: The Formula

it's a salad, only bigger, with stuff in it

Carla’s Dream Salad

Hello to my Big Crüe,

As we hurl ourselves headlong into the heart of June and solstice weekend, we enter no-cook season o’clock. One must have balance: when the weather is hot, the foods ought not. (This claim is not actually backed by science, but as this is not a medical journal, I won’t be stopped.)

The category is dominated by what I’ll refer to as Dinner Salad, which gives us broad leeway for interpretation. To quote Elaine: it’s a salad, only bigger, with stuff in it. Aside from being served cool to room temperature, this is a dinner based on a formula, not rules.

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Here’s how to game the formula.

Dinner Salad is dominated by produce, and has few—if any—cooked elements. The day Cosmo was born, September 10, 2009, I asked for a gigantic bowl of cut-up watermelon, seasoned with a little flaky salt, and I ate that in bed, with him on my chest. That counts. Aside from lettuces (below), the kinds of produce I want to find in my dinner salads include: tomatoes; cucumbers; green beans and wax beans (even better if blanched for a minute or two); shaved raw crunchy things like radishes, beets, kohlrabi, jicama, sweet peppers; and even broccoli and cauliflower.

Like most things, Dinner Salad is more fun when you add cheese. The feta in a Greek salad is a perfect example. I could have added feta or halloumi to my birth day bowl of watermelon, along with some olive oil, and that would have made it more salad-y. Shaved Parm, nuggets of cheddar, coarsely grated provolone or Jack, slices of Manchego, even pieces of a bloomy-rind cheese like Humboldt Fog can (and should!) end up in Dinner Salad.

Dinner Salads are champions of protein. That could come in the form of cheese, or any number of things you probably have in the house right now: canned chickpeas; cooked lentils; edamame; rotisserie chicken; leftover steak; crisp bacon; hard-boiled or jammy eggs; jarred or canned tuna; cooked salmon; smoked fish; hard salami.

Dinner Salads signal their umbrella category by featuring leafy things, especially the sturdier ones that can handle the addition of stuff. I’m thinking romaine, radicchio, endive, Little Gems, red- and green-leaf lettuce, cabbage. Though not sturdy at all, fluffy whimsical herbs are fabulous in dinner salads, so throw your basil, parsley, chives, cilantro, perilla, and mint in there, too.

Extremely Beautiful Salad (with a Secret)

Which of these would you consider a Dinner Salad? Tabbouleh. Grain salad. Antipasto Salad. Caprese salad. Cobb Salad. Vitello Tonnato. Dense Bean Salad (!!). Fattoush. Burrito Bowl. Kachumber.

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We love a carb in Dinner Salad, whether it’s in the form of a crouton, a cooked grain, a loaf of baguette for tearing, or a piece of Carole’s Fried Bread on the side.

Finally: the dressing. If you have olive oil and any acidic ingredient (literally any type of vinegar, pickle liquid, or lemon juice) you have dressing.

That said: Nutritional Yeast Vinaigrette is the best dressing in the entire world.

One of my favorite kinds of Dinner Salad is something we call “picnic dinner,” which isn’t even an assembled salad, it’s just a suggestive arrangement of things.

For this scenario, you get to dip the ingredients rather than tossing them with dressing. On a night like that, the only “cooking” required of you is to whisk together aioli, which is good on most foods, and can be doctored this way or that depending on how you like it (make it spicy with chile flakes or chile oil, stir in capers to go with fish, add anchovy paste to go to funky town, etc).

You can be intentional about this, as in the recipe for Aioli and All the Things for Dipping, below, or make it a fridge clean-out situation. Whatever you do, STAY COOL.

xoCarla

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We’ll be deeply engaged in salad chat this week, and it would be way more fun if you were there.

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Aioli and All the Things for Dipping is posted below for paid subscribers, in both PDF and plain text formats.

Thank you for being here <3