Side things on the plate

For big meals like Sunday lunch and holidays, I am always a little stumped as to what to serve as a salad with the meal. Since the meal is often full of rich carbs and proteins, I believe that it is 20151018in good taste logoimportant to include vegetables in some way. Most of the times I try to make a couple of dishes that incorporate the vegetables into one of the starches, like rice, and one of the meat dishes.

For some reason many people skip salads, especially when they see lettuce, referring to it pejoratively as grass. However, salad items like sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, shredded carrots, shaved apples and others, are readily added to their plates.

An assortment of salad ingredients Photo by Cynthia Nelson
An assortment of salad ingredients Photo by Cynthia Nelson

Taking a cue from this observation, I have stopped serving lettuce; instead, I shave, shred and slice a variety of ingredients that I think would make good accompaniments to the meal or components of a salad.

Since I have been doing that, I no longer have to worry about leftover salad. People take the things they want and incorporate them into their meal. I also notice that rarely do people ask for salad dressing.

There is no recipe for this type of offering; use whatever is in season and what you have available. What I would suggest is to go for different colours and textures, be creative in how you cut the ingredients and assemble them. If you are not good at composing a plate, simply put each set of cut ingredients in individual bowls, plates or platters. White goes well with everything but if you want to be playful, use contrasting coloured tableware.