- video: Jamie Oliver - How to make a good salad
- book p 33: reading "Jewel of the palace"
Homework:
- book p 39, 1 & 2
Transcript:
Jamie Oliver’s principles for superb salads
Right guys, I wanna show you a little bit about salads. Get you into it, get you understanding it. A lot of people, a lot of restaurants, a lot of shops do salads so, so bad, and they can be exciting, colourful, tasty, and I eat them every day, because I want to, not because it is “healthy”, ok? So I wanna get your head round a few principles.
So first things first, if you wanna save money and have a better product and have, you know, just better quality salad leaves, buy salad heads. It’s a tiny bit more of a faff, but let me talk you through that. You can buy heads of oak leaf, radicchio,watercress, you know, endive, little gem lettuce like this, and there’s many, many more different types of salads. What you do is you just take the outer leaves off, take the core out, wash them in clean water and maybe wash them in different batches of clean water until it’s all nice and clean and then just drain it in a colander and then that way you’re going to save a load of money to be frank. The bag stuff is convenient, but at the same time, if you want to save money and have a better product, that’s the way to go.
Now one of the things that a lot of people don’t have but I absolutely swear by is asalad spinner. And basically it’s a little bowl like that with a spinner with a basket here like that, and you just spin them like that. And it’s not one of those annoying gadgets that look good but you never use. The whole reason this is important is because all of that water there, right, that water here, isn’t sticking around your salad leaf and the reason that that’s good is when you do a dressing it’s going to stick to that leaf, and also the water, if it was left on, would make your dressing, even if it was good, really bland. If you haven’t got one of these, you don’t have to buy one, they’re convenient. What you can do is get a nice clean tea towel, put it in the middle, take up the corners, and just spin it around like a nutcase, and all the water will come off and it’ll be great.
So let’s get your head round what makes a good salad, right? And it’s dead simple. Right? You can vary it, you can change it, you can tweak it to however you like it or whatever you like, and whatever’s in season. But let’s just start off with a basic everyday salad here. I’m using a round lettuce, it’s one of the cheapest lettuces in the world. Right, a little bit of radicchio, slightly bitter but it’s nice in contrast and it’s good colour. If you ever wanna use herbs, soft herbs are rock ‘n roll. I’m using mint here, you could use basil, you could use parsley, and there’s many other soft herbs you could use. Dill, fennel, tarragon, stuff like that that’s going to give it a little bit of fragrance, a little bit of a kick.
Vegetables – right! Of course there’s things like tomatoes and stuff like that, but you don’t exactly have to chunk it up or slice it up like you get it everywhere else. A really cheap speed peeler like this means that you can get something as lovely as a cucumber and just slice it, and you can just make it look different and interesting, and exciting. And it looks like something a chef would do, even if you’re a rubbish cook. So just by doing that, I mean I don’t know any chefs, even the Japanese boys, that can knock that out every single time. Look at the thinness of that, right? You can do that, and it’s cheap! Carrot, fennel, celeriac, celery, beet roots, any kind of nice, beautiful sort of root veg that you think that will be good in a salad – have a go. But again, the speed peeler – brilliant. And, you know, things like watercress here, you know, they’re nice and peppery, and some endive, or you could use the radicchio, you know, they’re more sort of mustardy and bitter. And maybe just on its own you wouldn’t like it, but sort of lost amongst the mixed salad. You know, it’s going to give it all sorts of different flavours and it will really, really work.
And then also texture, right? Crunch – ok, and that can come in different forms. Here I’ve got some pine nuts, I’ve got some different roasted seeds. They’re like sunflower seeds and bits and pieces like that. Stale bread, or croutons, as you want to call it. Even, you know, taking an Indian papadum and just like smashing it up. It’s all good, it’s all good stuff.
And also dairy, you know cheese, you know feta cheese, mozzarella cheese, any blue cheese, parmesan, you name it. Just about any cheese actually can work. You can crumble it, slice it, grate it, but you don’t have to. Basically what I’m saying to you is a salad does not, and should not, be boring. Get different types of leaves, possibly a herb, possibly a vegetable, possibly something crunchy, like a seed or a crouton of something, and dairy. And if you do any one or two of those elements it’s gonna be rock ‘n roll, it’s gonna be delicious.
But, if I just ate that now – boring! And some of the good news is that actually, if you eat your salad in the presence of oil and acid, your body can digest more of the goodness from this. So actually, it’s almost like we were supposed to have a salad dressing, do you know what I mean? So I wanna give you my basic, basic version of a salad dressing. Basically, I do three to one, so what I mean by that is I use a good olive oil, I’m going to put in three parts olive oil, so say that olive oil is three parts. And then I’m going to use a, this say, a vinegar here, let’s use a lemon juice, right? The acid can be balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, champagne vinegar, it could be grapefruit juice, lemon juice, lime juice. Right, so acid can be in many different forms. As soon as I put that lemon juice in you can see exactly how much there is. That’s why I quite like using the jam jar, especially for beginner cooks. You can see exactly how much is in there. If you look in there now, that’s pretty much, that’s nearly two to one actually. Let me top that up with a bit of oil. You can see the oil and the vinegar separating, that’s three to one. So you’re on a good way to a dressing. A nice pinch of pepper and a good pinch of salt. Now my advice to you on dressings is, always make it just slightly too salty and slightly too acidic, right? And the reason for that is when you put it on your salad, and basically salad leaves is like 90, 98 per cent water, right, it’s going to knock it back down to being bland again. So if you ‘re slightly too acidic and salty, by the time it’s knocked it down it’s perfect. Okay?
The other thing is that is your basic olive oil and lemon juice dressing. And once you’ve shaken it, actually be bothered to taste it. So, lemon juice, that’s it, that’s a good olive oil and lemon juice dressing. If I wanted to turn it into, like, a French style dressing, you know, just by putting a nice teaspoon of Dijon mustard into that, like that, and maybe swap out lemon juice for red or white wine vinegar. We’ll give it another shake and you’ll have a nice, thick, French style dressing. Different again! And of course, if you wanted to lighten it with a little bit of yoghurt, you can really do all of these things. So as long as you stick to three parts olive oil, one part acid, salt and pepper, you can put things like mustard in, or yoghurt in, or chopped herbs in, or chopped chilli in, and you can kind of like vary your dressings, which makes it exciting and fun, and it means that you can own your own dressing.
But just to finish this basic salad all I’m gonna do now is dress it. The important thing about dressing is, you don’t wanna overdress. If you overdress a salad, it’s gonna be heavy, it’s gonna ... the acid will cook the salad leaves and it will just be horrible, right. And also you don’t want too much of this, alright? So just a little bit of dressing in, use your fairy fingers, right, as you’re tossing it. Just twinkle your fingers. And the reason for that isn’t to sort of be silly, it’s to literally just beautifully coat every single little piece that’s in that salad. Take yourself a nice bit of that salad and honestly, I mean, that is a really humble salad.
So good luck and remember: Salads aren’t for nancies, salads are cool! Good luck!
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