Salads can be a starter, side or star attraction, simple or complex, hot or cold. Every cuisine has them and they’re always versatile, a great way to experiment with what’s on hand. Here are some of my favourite salad recipes from around the world.
Cucumber, Fetta & Tomato Salad I love the salty tang of fetta-style cheeses, especially combined with cooling cucumber. Traditional Greek Feta is made from sheep milk, sometimes with a little goat milk added. It has PDO status, meaning only cheese produced to specific criteria within a certain part of Greece can be called Feta (note […]
Swiss Cucumber Salad This easy Swiss cucumber salad is a refreshing side dish for almost any main course. The yoghurt dressing adds a touch of acid which cuts through the richness of creamy or fried dishes. A good natural pot-set yoghurt, like the buffalo milk one from Vannella Cheese, makes all the difference to this […]
Swiss Kohlrabi & Herb Salad The Swiss love creamy salad dressings, often using yoghurt to supply both the creaminess and a little tang. Finely sliced root vegetables such as kohlrabi or celeriac are often served this way. As celeriac are much larger than kohlrabi, you’d need about half a small one for this salad. This […]
Chinese Red-Cooked Chicken Salad Red-cooking is a classic Cantonese technique of braising food in dark soy sauce and Shaoxing wine to give it a burgundy hue. Inspired by a recipe of Cheong Liew’s, I use those ingredients to marinate chicken before baking it. Cheong served a deep-fried version of this dish as part of Neddy’s […]
Apple & Pecan Salad Two of the American South’s favourite ingredients, crisp sweet apples and crunchy pecans, come together in this simple salad that’s a bit like a Southern version of Waldorf salad. I like the way it looks layered, with the apple mixture piled onto a bed of mixed greens, but you can just […]
Salade Verte – How To Dress A Green Salad A simple green salad (salade verte in French) is the ideal accompaniment to so many dishes, whether it’s made from just one type of leaf or a mixture of several. It may be simple, but it deserves the same respect as the rest of the meal […]
Southern Ham Salad The South is famous for smoked ham. It’s fried for breakfast, sliced for sandwiches and popular in this party favourite. It’s called a salad, but is really more of a dip or spread, perfect for serving alongside its retro cousins, pimento cheese spread and devilled eggs, for an impressive start to a […]
Turkish Eggplant Salad Eggplant appears in so many dishes in Turkey that it should be named the country’s national vegetable! And why not – it’s a wonderfully versatile and delicious ingredient, especially when it’s exposed to a bit of intense heat. One of Turkey’s most ubiquitous dishes, patliçan salatası (Turkish eggplant salad) often automatically arrives […]
Orange, Almond & Date Salad Once you discover how easy it is to segment an orange (see video below), you’ll be making this simple dessert regularly. Use vivid Persian pistachio slivers instead of almonds if you like (no need to toast them) or add some pitted olives, chopped parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper for […]
Aussie Solomon Gundy Solomon Gundy is a classic Jamaican spread (also called solomon-a-gundy) made from heavily salted herring so strongly smoked that the flesh turns a reddish brown (thus ‘red herrings’). The rather odd sounding name comes from the old-fashioned English term salmagundi, referring to a highly-seasoned dish made from a mixture of meat and […]
