I love salads. I’m not so enamored of shopping, and that was even before the pandemic narrowed my shopping opportunities down from once a week to once every ten days—or even every two weeks. I live half an hour from the nearest grocery store, and have for thirty years now (omg), and like to have something fresh at every meal, so I’ve had a lot of practice in figuring out salads at the tail end of my shopping-less period.
A perfect example was today, when I had to consider what to give a dinner guest (who is from the one household we fraternize with right now, and usually outdoors and with social distancing in place for everybody but the dogs). I had some salmon in the freezer, so that’s easy—I’ll cook it a l’unilateral, which means the skin side facing down in a hot skillet skimmed with a little butter, until the skin is crisp and the fish is rare (I usually put a lid on it for the last minute to get it the way I like it best). Brown rice. I always have brown rice.
But the salad? What was I going to do about the salad?
I thought of shredding some collard greens growing in the garden, parboiling and draining them, and mixing with a paste of pounded roasted sesame seeds, soy sauce, and a little sugar. But damned if the bag I was sure I had of sesame seeds has gone into the witness protection program, because I can’t find it anywhere, unless it is disguised cleverly as TWO bags of flax seeds. (How did we end up with so many flax seeds, I ask myself?) There was a cabbage. I ALWAYS have a cabbage, and I recommend that, these days, you also always have a cabbage, and some unpeeled carrots, and some celery in the fridge, as these all last for weeks, and many many many things can be done with them. But I had already done many things with them this last shopless period, and anyway, I have a guest coming, so I wanted something special.
Then I noticed I had radishes. Radishes last a long time, too, so I generally have them in spring, and early summer, when they’re at their best and you can use their greens, too. (Just wash thoroughly, parboil in boiling water for two minutes, drain, squeeze out liquid, roll into a ball, pop into a freezer bag, add to anything that needs greens—you don’t even need to totally defrost, just enough so you can chop the ball into pieces before adding it. Yet another Pandemic Hint.)
Since I am going to put a wasabi butter atop the salmon filets, I started thinking of ways to prepare the radishes that would go with that. You know—Asian style. So I mixed up a basic Japanese salad dressing of rice vinegar, half that amount of sugar, some salt. Then I cut a peeled carrot up into little batons (always keeping the peels in a plastic bag to add to the dog food I’d cook later). I took about five hefty radishes, trimmed their ends (putting the ends in the same dog food bag), and cut them into the same size batons. Added them.
Tasted. Too sweet. Also kind of bland. Also the color was kind of boring.
I considered.
Looked in the fridge. There was a little dish of salted pickled lemons I’d made for some Caribbean style dish earlier in the week. So I pulled a couple of slices out, chopped them up, added to the salad.
Tasted. Still . . . not right. Just not . . . right.
(Caveat: When I say ‘not right’, I mean NOT RIGHT FOR MY TASTE. You’ll have your own taste. The Japanese like it with just vinegar and sugar in a 2 to 1 ratio with a little salt. You might too. But I didn’t. So I move on, without regret or recrimination. You should never pay me any attention when you do the same.)
Looked in the fridge again. Aha. A wedge of lime sitting there all by its lonesome. So I took it out and squeezed it over the lot. Tossed.
Much better. But now the lime was crying out for something. You know. FISH SAUCE. And chile. That’s what lime always makes me think of. Vietnamese flavors.
Scallions and cilantro.
I looked in the veggie drawer. Sure enough, a couple of red chiles lurked there, with maybe two or three days left to go in them. So I pulled out one. There were two wilting, miserable looking last scallions. So I pulled them out, trimmed off all the wilted bits, and laid them next to the chile. Then the cilantro. I’m at the end of the bunch, so what was left was looking fairly pathetic and wilted, though still green. Green and tasty is what counts here, since I was going to mince it all up so thoroughly that you wouldn’t notice the wilt. Pulled that out.
Chopped it all up fine. Added to the salad. And took out the fish sauce. Gave the salad a glug of that.
Tasted.
Just right.
Just just just right.
Now. You know what? I will never make that salad again, probably. But I know, at the end of the next shop free period, I’ll be peering in the fridge trying to make sense of an equation that adds what I have with what I want divided by what I feel like making. And it will all work out all right.
[Final hint: When you shop, along with all the more perishable veggies, such as lettuces, make sure to get veggies that will go the distance: carrots, cabbage (green and red, Napa, etc.), radishes, celery, etc. Tomatoes can be halved, roasted at low temperature till liquid is cooked out, and refrigerated for literally weeks. Greens of any kind (spinach, beet greens, turnip greens, collards, kale, chard) can be parboiled till tender, drained, squeezed, rolled into balls and stored in plastic bags in the freezer to be used at need. And don’t forget to have a big bag of organic potatoes on hand. Start by baking them with the skin on, then as they sprout, just peel them and cook them one of about a kazillion different ways. Yum.}