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Bowl of Salad Greens
I SMALL LOOSE-HEAD LETTUCE 3 STALKS CELERY I BUNCH SCALLIONS I BUNCH RADISHES FRENCH DRESSING I CUCUMBER Rub wooden salad bowl with garlic; arrange crushed, torn lettuce leaves, sliced green celery and leaves, minced scallions and some tops (or wild onion tops), with sliced radishes, in bowl. Pour dressing over greens, tossing until every piece is coated. Cover with sliced cucumber marinated in French dressing. Eat at once.
A raw tossed salad from a camp or picnic cookbook, built on the assumption that you have brought a wooden bowl, a clove of garlic and a jar of dressing along with you. The only real technique is in the order of operations.
- French dressing means vinaigretteIn mid-century American usage this is oil and vinegar, roughly three to one, with salt, pepper and often a little mustard — not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today. Whisk or shake it just before pouring.
- The garlic rubCut a clove in half and rub the cut face over the dry inside of the bowl until the surface looks faintly damp, then discard it. This is the whole seasoning strategy; a wooden bowl holds the oils, a glass or steel one gives a fainter result.
- Dry the greens firstAny water clinging to the leaves thins the dressing and keeps it from adhering. Spin or towel the lettuce until it squeaks before tearing.
- Loose-head lettuceButterhead types — Boston, Bibb — or a leaf lettuce such as green oak. Not iceberg, which will not tear into the soft crushed pieces the recipe wants.
- Marinating the cucumberSlice it thin and let it sit in dressing while you assemble the rest, ten to fifteen minutes. Longer and it weeps and goes slack.
- Wild onion topsThe substitution is genuine but only for those who know the plant. Several toxic look-alikes, death camas among them, grow in the same ground and lack the onion smell; if there is any doubt, use scallion greens.
- Eat at onceOnce the dressing is on, the lettuce begins collapsing within minutes. Dress at the table, not in advance.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly four servings as a side salad, fewer if it is the main part of the meal.
The garlic-rubbed wooden bowl was a common feature of American salad-making from roughly the 1930s through the 1960s, the same decades in which the Caesar and the chef's salad spread into home kitchens. Devotees insisted the bowl should never be washed with soap, only wiped, so that it built up a seasoning of oil and garlic — a practice food writers later argued against on the grounds that rancid oil in the grain does a salad no favors. The nod to wild onion tops suggests a book written with outdoor cooking in mind, though the recipe itself supports no more than that.