Know Your Salad

Salads make a tasty and nutritional accompaniment to our main food. It is low fat and literally brimming with healthy components. It is precisely for this reason that the weight watchers try to live on salads alone. The word salad has been derived from the French word ‘salade’ and consists of an assortment of raw or semi cooked edible products like vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts. Some salads also contain eggs, fish or meat. The salad is best eaten cold, with the exception being the German potato salad which is served as a hot dish.

Green Salads- A dieter’s delight the green salad is made up of raw, green and leafy vegetables. Tomatoes, mushrooms and carrots add to the taste apart from breaking the monotony of the totally green colored dish. Garnishing the salad with hard boiled eggs, bits of fish, crumbled cheese or sprinkling on a handful of nuts can provide variety to the palate.

Dressings- A salad without the proper dressing is incomplete. Apart from the mandatory salt and pepper,  edible oils or fat based substances are normally used to cover the salad. The western world prefers mayonnaise or vinegar based dressings. Italians, however, love their salads drenched in olive oil. Apart from the simple, single ingredient dressing, many elaborate dressings on salads have become extremely popular. The Caesar dressing and the thousand island dressing are two of such dressings and have been included in the menu of all high class restaurants.

Garnishes- Garnishing on a salad is pleasing to the eye and helps to whet the appetite.Bits of fish, meat, eggs and nuts are used imaginatively by the chefs. Some edible flowers, cheese and colored vegetables are also used to highlight the salad dish.

Fruit Salads- Salads may be made of fruits instead of vegetables. A variety of fruits soaked in their own juices are usually served as desserts. When the chilled fruit salad is served in a tall glass it becomes a fruit cocktail. The garnshing may contain nuts, raisins or whipped cream. More often than not it is served on a layer of ice cream.