Salads

Freshness in your plate...

Salads are dishes consisting of raw or cooked vegetables, meat or seafood, which may be mixed with a sauce or topped with a dressing. They can be served as appetizers, main courses, side salad or dessert salad.

The word “Salad” originates from the French “Salade”; sharing the same meaning with the Latin word “Salata” meaning salty or from “sal” meaning salt.

Salads are hot or cold, classical or contemporary, cooked or uncooked, simple (with one ingredient) or compound (with many ingredients) and may also include leftovers from a previous meal or carbohydrate ingredients like pasta, fresh or dried herbs like oregano, poached or boiled eggs or even lentils.

Salads originated in Europe, predominantly from France, Rome and Greece in the early 1700’s. The cuisines of these places have always been very balanced and the intake of salads has helped them live a healthy lifestyle.

In the early 19th century, America picked up on the trend of salads and made it their own by developing the “Salad Bar” concept, wherein every restaurant would have an unlimited salad buffet as a starter for any meal menu. Countries such as Japan, Australia and China followed suit.

Making a salad is an art and has 4 components, each of the components plays a vital role in the final dish and these are:

Salads are classified as simple salad when one or more primary ingredients make up the body. All the ingredients here are raw and fresh and with a single dressing.

A salad is classified as a compound salad if the body is made up of raw & cooked ingredients together and if there is a creative balancing of flavors, colors, textures & taste. A compound salad could be meat, fish, fruit or vegetable based.

A salad is classified as a green salad if it only includes raw ingredients; it doesn’t necessarily have to be plain simple greens, it could also be vegetables such as red bell peppers, pumpkins, beetroots & turnips.