Living Through Our Salad Days

Welcome to SALT PIG! From a nostalgic walk through of Lukas’ family’s Costco paint can of blue cheese dressing, to the maybe French/maybe made-up habit of Ellie’s family eating salad after the main dish, we break down our early childhood salad experiences. Present day, we love it so: raw, cooked, “signature,” with leaves, with no leaves. Lukas tries to convince Ellie to revisit broccoli salads, Ellie tries to convince her husband that her vinaigrette isn’t “too sour” (though maybe it is), and no one will convince either of us that salad plates are worth the space in the dishwasher. 

Discussed in this episode:

• A pretty good rundown of some of the cultural forces behind when salad appears during a meal
• Hetty Lui McKinnon, queen of fun and filling salads
• Broccoli salads galore: Lukas’ Picnic Broccoli Salad, a classic Southern Broccoli Salad, Melissa Clark’s Broccoli Salad with Garlic and Sesame
• Maggie Hoffman’s interview with Fermín Núñez, in which Mexican cuisine makes us “authors of our own bite”
• Veggie Craft, the protein pasta that Lukas mentions

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Salt Pig. We are two cookbook writers talking about the ups and downs of actual home kitchen life. Lucas, what are we talking about this week?

SPEAKER_02 0:13

This week we are talking about salad, which is a topic that we love and have a lot to say about. What is a salad? What are the salads we make every day? Some standout ones that we discuss. There's a broccoli salad. We go kind of deep on broccoli salad. A really good cold rabies salad I had over Christmas. It's a kind of a fun, enlightening salad conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah. Salad plates. Salad plates. Yay nay. Yeah. You can find new and old episodes wherever you listen to podcasts and check us out on Substack2 at saltpig.substack.com. All right, let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

So Ellie, you've been traveling. How was your trip?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Ooh, we have been traveling. It was wonderful. We had so much fun. We went to um so we flew into Barcelona and then we went um and stayed there for a few days, and then we went to the beach for a night, and then we went to like the sort of most northeastern part, like of I guess it's the Costa Brava, but it's sort of inland in these little medieval towns and stayed in Airbnb for a few days. With the kids. With the kids. It was their first time out of the country, and they were so pumped about it. We got them passports like two years ago, thinking that we were gonna be like using them all the time, and then we haven't. So um so it was so it was so exciting for them. And yeah, it was a blast, I have to say. It was a total success. Um Spain is wonderful. Um good weather. I mean, it's such a good combination of like the things that I love. And Barcelona, I felt felt like very family friendly, but it had just enough like culture for me to stay interested.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And a beautiful, like big walking city with all those boulevards and stuff and all the gorgeous architecture.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yes, yes. It was really it yeah, it was really cool. The food the food presented actually it's funny when Tom and I were talking about where to go, we were like, Well, the food's obviously not gonna be a problem. Like the kids are gonna love the food. And then we got there and like the first we were all like jet lagged. We went to the hotel, we all like took a little nap, then we went out for lunch. And we went to this like charcuterie place, and it was like it wasn't anything fancy, but it was very like they actually had like iberico ham legs like in these vices. Up on the bar. Up on the bar, yeah, like a big line of them, like four legs lined up on the bar, and the kids like eyes sort of went really wide and they kept like going.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

It's like the paw and everything. So there's no sort of denying the fact that this is a quarter of an animal.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, it is not like sliced up and wrapped in some paper from the deli. It's very much like a man goes over there with a special knife and is like carving it off. So they were like a little skittish, but they seemed game, and then the waitress was like, and we said they we were talking with the waitress and they were like, Oh, we love salami. So she was like, Oh, there's a special mixed salami plate that you guys have to get. The kids will love it. And we were like, Great, we'll get one of those, and we'll get some ham. So the guy like cut the ham and the kids sort of watched him very closely and just making some vegetarians, exactly, exactly. And so she brought over this plate of salami, and I mean, just the look of the salami alone, they were like, hold on a second. It was like in this, it was so beautiful. It was like this range of colors, you know. There was like from this very sort of light and rosy salami to this, you know, dark, really funky salami, basically. They tasted it and they were like, you could tell they were just like, nope, not what I thought it was gonna be, not not what I want, not what I want to think about. I'm just like they just like basically just shut down. And then there was like bread, you know, the delicious pan con tomat where it's just like a tomato rubbed in it with olive oil. It's like what's not to love. Even that, at that point, they were like, Nope, we don't want that either. We don't want anything. Like, we'll just drink some water. And they were like, and the water tastes weird. The water's very salty, they were kept saying.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Which it is a little salty, actually. I think we got sparkling water. I I think it's some Catalonian water that had maybe has more salt in it. I don't know. Maybe interesting. Yeah, but um so yeah, so they ate basically in short, for like a week, they just ate a lot of um patatas bravos.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Uh I mean that's the place to go for it's the place to go.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

I was like, yeah, crispy potatoes dipped in mayonnaise. I was like, yes. And you know, we get like a pastry or something in the morning and we'd let them pick whatever they wanted, and Margaret kept picking like this facaccia, which is basically just like pizza. So they were eating like pizza for breakfast and then potatoes for lunch and dinner. I was like, we'll eat vegetables another time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

I mean, they're on vacation.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, yeah. So it it it all worked out.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Are are they generally pretty adventurous? Like, will they take one bite of something before they decide whether or not they like it?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

They will because we s we really prod them too. And it was funny, I think it was it was really too bad because I think there were other things that they actually would have liked on the trip, but I think that initial plate of salami really um traumatized, feels like too strong of a word, but uh but it really made them skittish. Like they were like, oh, we are not at home, you're not at home, and what you say this is gonna be is not what we're expecting, and we're suddenly like very, very suspicious of the phone.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Something that feels familiar, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah, yeah. So luckily they could have pizza for breakfast, and yeah. We ate a lot of breadsticks.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Oh, yeah. Oh, the the crispy skinny ones and the paper pouches. Exactly. They loved those.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

We were like, this is delicious, wrapped in ham. They were like, nope, we don't want that. We just want the breadsticks. Did you and Tom have any culinary highlights that you guys actually one culinary highlight which I was kind of surprised about was um was this paella. I guess maybe not a big surprise if you're going to Spain, but I'm not really a paella person. I feel like it's it's it feels a little murky to me sometimes. Like it's the flavors feel a little um kind of earthy and not that um uh bright or interesting. I don't know. It it sometimes just feels a little murky. But we did go to this place on the beach, um which we went in thinking it was gonna be really touristy, and Tom got this paella, and I was like, okay, I guess we're here. And then it ended up being very, very delicious. And I think the difference in this particular one, because then later in the week we had a different one that was not that interesting, but um this one seemed to be cooked with just a ton of fat. Oh and that seemed to make a really big difference in the big surprise. Fascinating. Yeah, totally. Um it seemed to be a few.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

But was it like the rice did it feel like fried rice?

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah, well it felt like a it felt like the edges got like crispier and more um sort of uncuous. I feel like sometimes with paella it's just this rice that feels um a little bit sometimes it feels a little underdone. I know it's supposed to be kind of al dante. Sometimes it feels a little bit underdone, and then it just feels like very dry. Uh-huh. So there's something about this extra fat that made it feel um a little better.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

That's I mean, that's a great thing to discover when you're traveling, especially when you're in Spain.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

It is. Yeah.

unknown 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

That's wonderful. I'm so glad.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a real treat.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Well, and then um eating all that meat and salami and stuff with we have a perfect topic for you.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

We're gonna talk about salad. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's literally like what when I was on the air on the airplane coming back. I mean, I literally hadn't eaten a vegetable in like the whole week. Like there was just not a veg I'd had like a r some roasted pepper bits here and there, but it was really just like not a vegetable in sight. And um, and when we got on the plane, you know, they served us this kind of grim lunch that had like the world's smallest salad. And it was like, Oh, yeah, like four leaves. Four leaves. Four green leaves. Exactly, and like two little circles of radish and uh one little circle of cucumber, and I like ate it with such gusto. I was sitting next to Henry, and I was like, Do you want your salad? It tastes so great. Like, let me prepare it for you. He was like, No, thanks, Mom. I was like, Okay, I'll eat it. And I just like snarfed it all down. I was just like, it was just all I craved. So perfect topic.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah. Yeah. Well, also it's like weird how I feel like this is such a common thing to get home from vacation and be like, I want a salad. I mean, this is what we were talking about in the last episode.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

I know.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

But I I guess he just kind of overindulged. But why is it that travel food so often doesn't feature salads and vegetables and like fresh vegetables?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I don't know. I guess the places we're going to be special enough or something. But um but that's what's so strange is that a salad can be so special. So special, yeah. And also it can just be I don't know, it can just feel really necessary. There was something as I was like chomping on these like four leaves, I was like, ah, humans are supposed to be eating leaves. I was like, yes, this is important.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Well, I grew up to like we had a salad with every like dinner was not complete without a salad.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

And I remember that being one of my first tasks in the kitchen was my mom would have me make the salad, and for a while it was like bag Caesar sal Caesar um salad mixes and then or like one of the other ones, and we often had a lot of like we had the assortment of bottled salad dressings in the refrigerator door, which I know this is very different from how you probably grew up. But at some point I learned how to make a balsamic vinaigrette and then I began doing the homemade dressing, but anyway, salad was always my like for the family, you yeah, for the family just to add to our you know everyday dinners.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah. Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

But it's like that's never left me. A meal really doesn't feel complete if there aren't some fresh screens.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah. I you know, it's funny, I grew up the same way, and you're absolutely right. We did not have bottled salad dressings, much to my chagrin, which like I was like so jealous of other people's bottled bottled salad dressings. Like, oh my god, my best friend Dana had like exactly what you're talking about. The inside of her refrigerator door had like ranch. Catalina dressing.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

But do you do you know which one I'm talking about? That's like the color of ketchup. It's like this Catalina includes ketchup, basically. It probably is Catalina's something. Maybe it's a Catalina like French dressing, or what is Catalina?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

So as you say that. I'm probably making that up.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

The exotic Catalina dressing.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Some Italian vinaigrette, you know, or Italian dressing.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, what I really craved was creamy Italian dressing for some reason, which now like sounds very yucky to me. But um, but at the time as a child, I was like, I think it's because it was the opposite of like my mom's very delicious, very French homemade vinaigrette, which was what she would make for our salads like every night across the board.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

And I was just like, oh, I just want something creamy and um with a little bit of sugar in it and some stabilizers and and maybe some some something to give it that little savouriness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Um that uh long shelf life.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. But yeah, I I loved I I eventually also started making salad dressing. I remember my mom showing me how to make salad dressing like in a little jar, and it was such a um it was such a nice like kitchen task to give a kid.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Oh yeah, totally. And it's one of those things too where I feel like I started to learn in doing that how just like how to balance flavors, where you're like, oh, because it went, especially it's one of those things you make every day, so you can sort of see over the course of time how how to refine it.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yes, I think that's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

But one more one more purchase salad dressing that was that kind of loomed large in our family was um at Costco. There was like a jug, it was like a paint bucket of Caesar dressing. You I've I I doubt that it is still being sold, but my parents went on the the Atkins diet where you know you could just eat a burger on top of a salad and then just ladle it was no, it wasn't a Caesar dressing, it was a blue cheese dressing.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

In a paint bucket. And we could just ladle the blue cheese dressing on top of the burger and the lettuce and the tomato, and I mean it sounds too good to be true.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Something was awry. That's really funny. Oh my gosh. Do you so what like salad dressings do you because I still just basically make vinaigrets at home. And it's like actually, and Tom Tom likes vinaigrette, but he I think he thinks that my vinaigrette have too much vinegar. Oh, interesting. They probably do. I think it's probably like leftovers.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Conserving that olive oil.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

It's conserving that olive oil. Exactly. It's like weird, I think it's like weird nineties like diet culture where I'm like, I don't need as much olive oil as like one to three, you know. Like I'll I can just get away with like one to a big one, you know. And I think he he grew up with salad dressings in the refrigerator door, so I think he's like, I don't want like a really sharp salad. Yeah, I don't want to steal my the enamel. So I've I've been trying to I've been trying to fine-tune for the last like 15 years of us being together trying to make salad dressing that he really gets into.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Do you eyeball it or do you have a ratio in mind?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

I mean, I eyeball it and I think I just need to eyeball it more carefully. Because yeah, what ratio do you use?

SPEAKER_02 14:01

I have a one-to-one, which is a lot less than like a French vinaigrette is usually like four to one. So it's like a fair amount of oil. Yeah, which is delicious. Right. But I actually like more vinegar flavor, I've realized. I do too. It just kind of makes more sense to me intuitively to make a dressing that way.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yeah, I do too. But I think there's probably some there's there definitely is some middle ground where it's like one to two would probably satisfy. Or totally. And also like it depends on what vinegar you're using too. Like if you're using a really sharp vinegar, then you might need more oil or something else. What else do you put in yours?

SPEAKER_02 14:38

I do so my sort of like everyday one, I'll do a plop. It's so basic. It's like a plop of Dijon mustard wine vinegar or well, actually what I like to do now is half fresh lemon juice and then half vinegar, so you get like an aged acid acid and a fresh acid. Then I put a little squirt of honey and then a big pinch of salt, and then just whisk in the oil. And I do it right in the salad bowl because I don't want to have an extra or sometimes if I'm making it in a batch, I'll do it all in a jar and then shake it up and keep it in the fridge.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, yeah. I usually make a big jar of it, and I think that's the other problem, is that I shake it and it gets emulsified, and maybe that first salad tastes great, and then maybe the second salad I don't shake it as much or something like so. I inevitably end up by the end of the jar of vinaigrette, it's like really vinegary because all the oil has risen to the top and I've poured it all off in previous salads.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Is it also hardened the oil? Well, I don't put it in the fridge. Oh, you don't? Oh, really? Interesting. Okay. I probably doesn't need to be in the fridge. I don't know why I do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

I mean, it's funny uh because I'm so ooggy about things going bad. For some reason with salad dressing, I'm not that oodgy.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

But um but it doesn't yeah, now that I'm thinking about it, there's nothing in there that's perishable.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess the lemon juice, maybe in your case, maybe at some point that would get a little weird.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

But yeah, I guess but you've got like a cap of olive oil to keep it from reaching the air. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I get into now, especially as I'm developing recipes and trying to like give each salad a little bit more than just a basic vinaigrette. I love to whisk in like a big plop of yogurt. Like the other night I was working on a recipe.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Creamy Italian.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Creamy Italian? Is that what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

I think you could sort of convince someone that's sort of creamy Italian-ish.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

I guess so. I didn't think about it that way. I was actually what I noticed because I was making it was like a lemon vinaigrette, and um I was using some preserved lemon, which we've talked about before, but it was just like so something was so missing from it, and I'd done an earlier version where it was like a yogurt-based dressing. And I just put a plop, a big plop of Greek yogurt in and whisked that in there, and I didn't actually even notice that it gave it a lot of body. What I noticed is that it just balanced out all the flavors. It was like that it was the acid, I guess, and the fat that was like the maybe the two things working in tandem, but it just completely brought the dressing into focus.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

I believe it. I really believe it. Yeah, sometimes I mean it is vinaigrette's funny because it it is really trying to bring these things together. And sometimes I mean sometimes I do find like a salad dressing that sits around does seem a little bit better, like it does sort of come together. But um but that makes sense to me that that adding something like that would would bring it together.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Or I love to whisk in like miso paste or tahini or something that's like really rich and flavorful.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

And that gives it I mean, just kind of you take a vinaigrette and it gives it a new personality.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

I went through a stage where um where I was grading in because when I used to make vinaigrette as a child, I thought it was really fun to um I'd use like a garlic press and put in a garlic clove. Um, and for some reason that really appealed to Tom. So for a while I was doing that, because that's just sort of like anything to get him on board with my salad dressing. And that that does that sort of brings it together in a weird way too. I think sometimes there's something about just a really plain vinaigrette that doesn't feel like it has I don't know. It doesn't you have to really get the balance right. I think that's it. And sometimes I just I rush through it, I'm throwing it all in a jar, I'm shaking it up, and I'm like, nah, it's good enough for me. And like I'll put some more salt and pepper on it when I put it on my plate. And like if I took the time to be like, oh, this could use a little bit more salt or maybe another squeeze of honey or whatever, yeah better.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

But do you notice sometimes you can dial in the dressing and then the second you mix it with the ingredients, it it's a totally new thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

That's the hardest part about making salads.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Absolutely. I know. I know. Especially when you're talking about like really jazzy ingredients. Like if it's you know, if it's just a pile of lettuce, then you can like dip some lettuce in your salad dressing and be like, that's great. But if it's um if you're adding like cheese or nuts or all that sort of stuff, like then it gets really um it does seem to get kind of complicated.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

And in those cases, when I make salads where there are like nuts and I love to put like slivered dates in salads, that's one of my favorite things. Orange supremes or like stuff like that. It's I want that in those cases I need the salad dressing to be pretty like bare bones. It really is just like bridging the gaps. I think rather than yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

I think that's right. And I think that's actually maybe where my salads with Tom have taken sort of a sad turn, is that like like maybe everything in my life since I've had children, I'm just like doing the bare minimum. And uh so it's like so we're just having like green salads. They're just lettuce and salad dressing, and there's nothing really else going on in it. Whereas I remember like I used to um I lived with my sister and my brother-in-law for like almost a year when I was like in sort of a life transition. And um I remember I used to make I used to cook a lot when I was there, but I used to make salads, you know, most nights. And my brother-in-law used to call them signature salads because it was like, you know, I'd be like, I'm putting in like avocado and fat of cheese and toasted nuts and dried cranberries and like that sort of salad, you know, where it's like slicing up different vegetables and lettuce and this and that. And then it's yeah, then you could kind of just like you could drizzle some olive oil and put some salt on it and kind of be done. Like squirt a lemon. Yeah, squirt a lemon and you're set. So it's like when you're when you're just like, oh, here's this sort of trough of greens, and I'm like, time for us to eat our greens. Maybe not. Maybe not.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

As we're talking about this, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking that we're you and I are I think we have the exact same vision of a salad in our minds. We're talking about like a green leaf salad, which is not a main dish salad.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And that is like light and sort of serves to sort of like add some fresh freshness to the meal.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

But I feel like that and I I eat a salad for dinner most nights. Like as I make a big salad and put a bunch of stuff in there and put some kind of protein on top. That's like one of our default meals. Is it really? I think yeah. It is so good. It's I could eat it every night, and it's so handy for just uh working through like the CRISPR drawer and I don't know, being able to throw all the odds and ends into one type of place. So I guess that's like a a bowl salad sort of thing. But even as we were preparing to have this talk, I just went through a couple of my cookbooks to see like what are people calling salads these days. Because um it really is like a hard to define category. And I was trying to think of some of the standout salads of the past couple years, and one of them that I think about constantly was this very simple um boiled kolrabi salad that Vincent's grandmother made at Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Oh my gosh!

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Boiled batons of kolrabi, and she just kind of dressed it. I think it was just. And like mayonnaise, and maybe it was some kind of spruced-up mayo sort of thing, but it was so good. And I think part of what it was is it was very heavily seasoned. Yeah. It was like really nice and salty. And I love Kohlrabi, but I'd never had it cooked before. I've only eaten it.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I've never had it cooked either.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

I didn't even really so good.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

And it was like what the that salad serves a very different type of function in a meal. It's almost like some kind of like accent. Or in line with that, I've gotten into this book, I think I've mentioned before, The Classic German Cooking by Louisa Weiss, which I think is so great. And that's you know German food. And then there's another one that I've been cooking from that's like Romanian food and other Eastern European cuisines.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

That are so beautiful and so simple, and it's all about making them is all about the sort of intention and the precision of bringing everything together. It's not in any way like a passive type of salad, but they are not complicated recipes.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Right. No, that's absolutely right. And they're using those ingredients that um yeah, I I think it's cool to be use like a cabbage or like a root vegetable or something that you're that you're transforming in a different way, like you're cooking it briefly or you're shredding it, or you're like a celery remoulade sort of situation.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

There's something really appealing. I was thinking um a lot about like shredded vegetable salads, because like if I love that texture, and I think it's so fun to eat like with the rest of your meal, as opposed to like a green salad, which is in my family we always ate green salad like after you had your sort of main dish. Oh like in the house I grew up in, where we'd be like, Oh, we're having pasta for dinner. So we'd have some pasta and then you'd have some salad. And then if you wanted to have some more pasta, you could have some more pasta. So that's sort of how I think of green salad. But I love the idea of these salads that you eat really with the rest of your meal, where you're like, this is this is providing this sort of little tart bite, or this little textural surprise, or it's a temperature surprise, like it's ice cold, or it's you know Right. Um I think those salads can be really additive to like the meal experience, as opposed to I think when I think of green salads, I think more of like I enjoy them, but they're they're like their own separate thing that you're kind of eating, maybe for health and also to sort of brighten up your palate, but it's not it is like kind of a cleanser, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

It's a cleanser. Well that remind I was just reminded of this because I was on Facebook and I got the 10-year memory post of the time that I I went to Chapanese for dinner. It was a set menu, but after we had this really rich meal, the server came around with a giant wooden bowl, and then just like onto your plate where there were all the drippings and dregs and all the stuff, just on to put like very lightly dressed, freshly, freshly cut salad greens on top of the plate, and you'd sort of like smear them around and all the juices and stuff to and it was delicious. So good. And it yeah. Yeah, in that sense, it's like it's a very different function from one of these other types of salads.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

And a critical one in a meal like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yes, in a meal like that, I think that's true. And that and I that's yeah, that's usually how we eat salad at home. I guess just because I've sort of I've never really gotten over that.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

But there is something after as like a a post meal.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

It's sort of a second course almost. Okay. But using the same plate, like I find using salad plates kind of kind of silly. And I'm like, as the dishwasher in the family, I'm like, no thanks. We're not doing that. I'm like, your plates just fine, it's all going in the same place.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Is that a European thing? The post is that where the shape and if at Japanese that that custom comes from?

SPEAKER_00 25:57

I think maybe it does. I think maybe it's kind of French. Maybe you have a salad course, like maybe.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

It's funny when you go to restaurants in New York that this it the salad is often before the main dish.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah. I don't normally like to order a salad before my meal. Do you ever do that?

SPEAKER_02 26:16

I guess I do if I'm like, if it's a really interesting, fun salad, but yeah, those types of simple salads, I never think to order them because I'm like, I can just make this at home.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

That's what I'm always thinking. And then I'm sure if we ordered them, we'd we'd have like our minds blown.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah, exactly. Like my shape and use experience, or I'm now remembering my friend Catherine and I, when we were in our twenties, we used to like go on one big splurge dinner um a year. And um we this time, this was I mean, kind of embarrassing now because this place has been so thoroughly uh cancelled and for you know legitimate reasons. But we went to the spotted pig. Okay. And um sorry. And it's heyday. Yeah, in a heyday. And I remember we had our whole meal, and then Catherine, who's just like the coolest person I know and just entirely herself, and just she just has like such good instincts about everything. And she was just like, um, can I just get like a leafy green salad? And this is you know, after we'd finished our meal, and they brought over this like pile of arugula that almost looked like it had no dressing on it, but it was like perfectly seasoned, perfectly dressed, and after this really rich meal that we had, it was I I couldn't think of anything more delicious. It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Oh a pile of arugula perfectly dressed, and I've I've started actually because I used to do it with like lemon and olive oil and salt, and now I've actually just stopped putting um lemon on it at all. I just got olive oil and salt.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

You probably don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I don't think you need it. And because again, Tom would be like, This is too sour for me, which really made me crazy. But I now I started now I'm sort of on board. I'm like, just a little olive oil and salt, and it is delicious, and you do just feel like you could just eat handfuls and handfuls and handfuls and handfuls of it. Rugo supposed.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Oh god, so good. And when it's really, really fresh and you know, it doesn't have any of that woody texture when it's kind of old, you know?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Oh god, so good.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Well, what kind of like jazzy salads do you make these days? I mean, there's there's all sorts of categories I guess we could go into, but like do you do you like do you make any cooked salads?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Well, I do a lot of like meal salads, and I feel like we are living in a moment now of like European classifications of food aren't quite there. Like a European salad doesn't describe what this is, and I think it's a very influenced by like Asian cuisines. Yeah. And so I was thinking of like Hetty's recipes for these like really vibrant Hetty McKinnon's recipes for these really vibrant um salads with like noodles or like rice cakes, or there's like a lot of it's you know meant to really like fill you up. And I make a lot of those too because like I want to eat a bunch of vegetables and I really like it when it feels fresh and there's all the textures and I can sort of get all my you know nutritional needs in one place. I was just working on one the other day, um, a shaved cauliflower salad, a raw one.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Have you ever made anything like that? No.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

I just put the cauliflower through the slicing blade of the food processor.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Really?

SPEAKER_02 29:19

And then this is actually the dressing that I mentioned where it was like the yogurt is what fixed it. So I was doing that with uh what else did I put in there? Lentils. I was like lentils, shaved raw, cauliflower, a yogurt y lemony dressing. I threw some slivered dates, and as it was, it was kind of like heavy. And so then I put in a bunch of baby arugula to like lighten it up.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

And you know, I happily ate that on its own, but when we had it for dinner, we cooked off some fish fillets and put them on top, and it was really nice. And when the leftovers for lunch, I made some for Vincent. We did a little tinted tuna on top, which was good. Um, I mean, that kind of stuff is really top of mind right now for me. That's what those are the type of recipes I'm working on for my book.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Yeah, I bet. Well, also raw cauliflower, I I do not like um raw broccoli, but raw cauliflower is pretty tasty.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Really? Even in like a salad for have you had like the some of those classic raw broccoli salads?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

I haven't had the ones that kind of transform. Is it aren't there these ones that like if you toss them with dressing, then they kind of change into somehow being slightly they're not exact they're not cooked, obviously. They're like I know I think Melissa Clark has one.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Well, there's a famous like southern broccoli salad, which it's raw broccoli florets, and there's a creamy dressing, and then like raisins and raisins and bacon and that kind of thing. Um I don't think I've had like a traditional one, but I've riffed on that recipe. There's one on my website from years ago that's so good I made it constantly where it was like a creamy miso-based dressing, and then I crumbled up barbecue potato chips on top and threw slivered dates in there. It sounds so wild, but it was so good. And I brought that to every every dinner all summer. It was so good. Wow. I don't know. I do I don't think of the broccoli being transformed. I just notice how it's like the raw crunch is really appealing in that sense. Very good.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Maybe I should try it. Maybe I should try it again. Because I think I guess if I'm just like gnawing on a piece of raw broccoli, it doesn't really appeal. But maybe if it's dressed and has all this delicious stuff with it, I'm sure that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Maybe it's also I mean, we've all been traumatized by the crude de tae platters from the grocery store where it's like a tree of raw broccoli that you're supposed to dip into blue cheese dressing or a a big old chunk of raw cauliflower. When it's small and like more spoonable than forkable, it's quite nice.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I think I bet that would make a big difference. I should do that. I think the Melissa Clark one, if I remember correctly, it's like it's maybe like a soy sauce influence dressing. Oh, like soy sauce sesame oil. I can't remember. We'll I'll look it up and we can put in the show notes. But um I think it's the type of thing where like you toss the broccoli with the dressing ahead of time for like an hour or two ahead, and it it kind of somehow softens it, or I I remember reading out of the description or reviews or something that said that it kind of changed it. So I was like, that sounds kind of appealing. Because there's again, I think I am thinking of like crude broccoli where I'm like it's sort of dry and feels like a mouthful of um like woody florets. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Yeah, like eating a broom.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, I don't want to eat a broom. But yeah, if it was sort of a a softened broom, uh a spoonable broom, maybe that would be better. Because I love I mean broccoli's like my favorite vegetable, so I'm like, I should I should be, yeah. Oh, it's my kids' favorite, so now I'm just sort of stuck with it. But I like it.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

I think it's worth maybe trying that Melissa Clark one just to see if it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Maybe I will.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Because it's also nice, yeah, or but it's nice to make a big salad like that where you don't have to pre-cook the broccoli and blanch it. And broccoli's so weird too because it the it absorbs so much. Like when you have do you ever notice that if you if you like sear it in a skillet, it just soaks up all that oil right away?

SPEAKER_00 33:13

I haven't noticed that. But it will sort of change with the dressing, maybe because it's yeah, it really absorbs it.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

It's not like a maybe it's not a drippy salad, is what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

But maybe it's the surface area of broccoli. It's gotta have really high surface area.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yes. Are you making any salads for dinner tonight?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I'm not. Um, I'm making uh Margaret's favorite dinner, which is what we call sushi bowls. Oh, which um I can't remember if I've talked about this, but it's it's all in the sort of marketing of this thing. It's not a really a sushi bowl. Um, but it is some rice. I cook some salmon. Um, and then I cut up like an avocado and some cucumber, and then we have little seaweed snacks. Oh, fine. You know, like the little tiny nori snacks. So then everyone can like make their own individual tiny little sort of sushi taco sushi taco, exactly things, which for some reason Margaret's just like all about. And we make like spicy mayo that she can dip it in.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

So that sounds great. Do you make super is it like sushi rice? Do you season the rice?

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I don't even really season the rice. I mean I salt it before I cook it, but I don't even do that. I could do that, that's probably a good idea. I use like short grain rice, like either short grain brown rice or short grain white rice. Okay. But um it's really just about eating those seaweed snacks with kind of avocado, basically. That's what everyone likes.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Yeah, anytime food is interactive, it's just more fun too.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And you get to like make your perfect bite. Like she's like, Can I make you my perfect bite? And I'm like, sure, can I make you my perfect bite?

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Yeah, I love I just heard an interview with a chef, um I have his name here. Umes. He's the co-author of this book, Vita Vitamina T, which is about the tacos and toast um tacos, tortas, tamales, and more. So it's like a sort of Mexico cookbook, but specifically the street food type of stuff. And he described Mexico Mexican cuisine as one of the only cuisines where you are the author of your own bite with all the condiments. And I was like, oh, that's such a fun way to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

It totally is. And I think that's like that is the way to feed children, it seems like. Like if they can be the author of their own bite, then they will eat that bite, but any other way, they're like, no, thanks. So what are you making for dinner?

SPEAKER_02 35:33

I'm doing um some orchiette. I want to do like a broccoli rob orchiette thing. Yeah. I did a test of this earlier. Everything right now is just recipe testing. So um I want to do something that's kind of creamy and non-dairy. So it's like uh the broccoli rob, the orchiette, chickpeas, and then kind of a tahini type sauce.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

But hot. Wow. Um, so it's like a tahini cream that gets stirred in at the end and with a good amount of lemon juice. It was good. I'm gonna try it again, but um I was really hoping that this could be like one of those one-pan-D you ever make one-pan pastas where like the pasta cooks in the sauce.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yes, I do, and I love that.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

And me too. But do you ever buy the like chickpea pastas or the protein pastas?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

I haven't had a lot of success with those, so I've I've sort of been taking a break from them. I should probably try them again.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

There are, I didn't I never really liked the chickpea ones, like that one. I feel like it falls apart and it gave me like a lot of bloating and I did not enjoy it. But there are all these other brands. There's one, um, I can't think of the name of it and I don't have it, but it's like basically made up all these like different vegetable protein somethings. But I found that it's like a brown rice and like vegetable pasta that is a high protein pasta. But where I was going with this is that you can't really cook them in the same way, you know, like the wheat pasta works for those one-pot dishes, but these you have to cook and really rinse them off before you can mix them back into a sauce or a dish. So I'm I don't think it's gonna be a one pat one pan dinner.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

And you're committed to using those pastas in this dish.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Well, only because this is like a protein angle. Yeah. But I'm I'm gonna make it also with the wheat pasta. I think tonight maybe I'll do the wheat pasta. It's Friday. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Treat yourself. Um that sounds great. I don't I never think of having tahini kind of hot.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Yeah, it actually is pretty good. And you know how you can like turn tahini into a sauce so easily by just thinning it out with some water and lemon juice and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

It's I could see how it would work really well in like that one pan concept, because if you have the sort of pasta water and the pasta and everything's all sort of soupy, that would blend in really easily.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah, we'll enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah, I will, and enjoy your sushi bowls. Glad you're back and had such a good time in Spain.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Thank you. Yeah, it's good to be back, actually. Good to have some some salads. All right, well, talk to you next week. Sounds good. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye-bye.