Salad

This is one of my go-to vegetarian meals, probably because the almonds and almond butter (one of my addictions) helps me forget the dish is meatless. The combination of textures also helps make this dish satisfying, and the salad keeps well at room temperature, making it perfect for brown-bagging. The recipe scales up easily, and any leftovers can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Almond butter is available at natural foods stores, many supermarkets, Whole Foods Market, and Trader Joe’s.

My introduction to the joys of room-temperature farro salad came years ago in Boston, when I wrote an article about two chef-couples’ different approaches to an outdoor dinner party. Gabriel Frasca and Amanda Lydon, who have since taken over the storied Straight Wharf restaurant on Nantucket to much acclaim, cooked the farro in the oven, then combined it with, among other things, fresh cherries, blanched and sautéed broccoli rabe, and pecans. Besides scaling it down to single-serving size, I stripped down their method considerably, standing in fresh arugula for the broccoli rabe so I don’t have to cook it, adding protein in the form of chickpeas, and using dried cherries instead of fresh because I can get them year-round.

I never liked raw spinach that much until I started eating it from my sister’s huge garden in southern Maine, where she and her husband grow almost everything they eat—a year-round endeavor, thanks to lots of canning, freezing, and the smart use of greenhouses and the like. She even brought me spinach seeds so I could start growing it in my own community garden. My garden is a tiny fraction of the size of hers, but the spinach comes out of it just as tender and sweet. This recipe barely wilts the spinach, so it still has that fresh flavor, but helps compensate for the sturdier texture of supermarket spinach, if that’s what you need to use, by softening it slightly. If you have tender garden-fresh spinach, you can feel free to let the topping cool before adding it to the spinach for a cold salad instead.

When I was growing up, one of my mother’s holiday specialties was something she called “Texas Salad,” similar to something others call taco salad, although hers didn’t include ground beef. It was basically a head of iceberg lettuce, a couple cans of pinto beans, a block of Cheddar cheese, a bag of Fritos, and a whole bottle of Catalina French-style dressing, along with a red onion and a tomato or two. Okay, here’s my confession: I loved it, the first day more than the second (although others in my family would say the reverse). My tastes have gotten a little more sophisticated since then, but I still appreciate what my Mom was going for: sweet and sour, crunchy and fresh, a little protein, and a little fat. I’ve had fun updating it, but, Mom, you’ll notice, I’ve kept all your principles intact.

I got this recipe from Patricia Jinich, chef-instructor at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., who got it from her sister. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity; it is perfectly balanced. It will keep its lively color for about a week in the refrigerator, but the flavor will last another week or two, meaning you can feel free to splash it onto all manner of salads, plus avocados, tomatoes, green beans, even cold rice. You can also use other leafy herbs, particularly parsley, basil, or mint, instead of the cilantro.

When I lived in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in the early 1990s, I had two obsessions. The first was the lettuce mix from organic farming pioneer Rosaly Bass, who charmed me so much I signed up for a subscription that let me pick what I wanted off her land all season long. (I tended to swing by at midnight after a long day as editor of the weekly Monadnock Ledger and shovel up carrots by moonlight.) The second was this powerfully sharp dressing, made by chef Hiroshi Hayashi at his elegant, health-minded Japanese restaurant, Latacarta. While Rosaly’s farm is still going strong, Hayashi long ago closed the restaurant and started the Monadnock School of Natural Cooking and Philosophy, but he still makes this vegan dressing. I use it to dress simple salads of butter lettuce with cherry tomatoes and carrots, taking care to slice the carrots into a perfect julienne the way I remember Hayashi did. The dressing also makes an excellent dip for crudités.

While I was in college (along with 49,999 of my closest friends at the University of Texas at Austin), I was one of the many nonvegetarian fans of Mother’s, an iconic vegetarian restaurant in Hyde Park, where I’d pretty much always get a smoothie and a huge spinach salad with this pungent dressing. Besides cashews, the main ingredient is tamari, a richer version of soy sauce that’s traditionally (but not always) made without wheat. Decades later, Mother’s is still going strong, reopening after a 2007 fire and still serving this dressing (bottling it for retail sale, even). Thanks to the glories of Google, I was able to track down a recipe for it from Rachel MacIntyre, a personal chef in Austin who blogs at thefriendlykitchen.com and used to work at Mother’s precursor, West Lynn Cafe. I lightened it a little bit, but it’s as addictive as ever. I toss it onto spinach and other salads, of course, but also baked potatoes, broiled asparagus, steamed carrots, and more, including Charred Asparagus, Tofu, and Farro Salad (page 144).

If there is any dish that could be served with every meal, every day, morning, noon, and night, it’s butter leaf lettuce salad. Eggs Benedict with butter leaf lettuce salad; cheeseburgers with butter leaf lettuce salad; pasta alla carbonara with butter leaf lettuce salad. Or, for a snack, just butter leaf lettuce salad. Its acidic elegance balances out the heartiness of any meal. The trick is the dressing. Making your own vinaigrette is among the biggest single improvements you can do in the kitchen—it becomes a distillation of your aesthetic defined by acid, oil, sweetness, and salt. Jennifer’s mastery of the vinaigrette has done more to promote the advancement of cuisine in our house than anything else: the shallots discover a plump, inner sweetness in the vinegar; the olive oil expresses its spicy-green spirit in response to the pepper; and the mustard emulsifies so that the dressing coats the lettuce in silkiness. Then the Maldon, strewn across the surface of the dressed salad—a glittering fencework of flakes perched along the crests and vales of lettuce—snaps like static electricity to stimulate the palate—a flash of pungency that illuminates everything so quickly and clearly that it is gone before you have time to fully comprehend what happened. This is Maldon’s raison d’etre: to reveal and amplify, then vanish, leaving you with only the desire for another bite.

Here, watermelon gives up its usual place at the table as a fruit and goes to work in a role usually occupied by its cousin, the cucumber. The melon is a lovely foil for the salty feta, tangy onion, and tart vinegar. It makes a refreshing and unusual salad for any summer brunch, luncheon, or dinner.

This dressing is especially good on tossed greens with tomatoes, red onion, and crumbled blue cheese.

This is great over salad greens and excellent with fish; you can also use it as a light veggie dip. I recommend roasting fresh red bell peppers, but if time doesn’t allow, substitute a 14-ounce jar of roasted red peppers, drained, adding 1 teaspoon of sugar to ensure sweetness.

Pour this dressing over mixed greens such as Romaine, Boston, and one or two types of bitter greens.