I've been meaning to post this article for ages now. Its a Times Crest article by Arundhati Ray and its about how you can make salads with local veggies. Very interesting read.
Eat salad to beat sultry weather
Eating salad is one of the best ways to survive this sultry weather. But however attractive the idea of casually tossing together a Caesar or Nicoise is, unless you're lucky enough to live in the hills, finding a decent array of greens is quite hard.
It's all available but salad greens - crisp lettuces, spinach that doesn't taste of stewed tea leaves - don't come cheap. One of the reasons out-of-season delicacies - icebergs, Romaines, Lollorosas - are so pricey is that they've been transported from places like Ooti and Coonoor. And in addition to paying a fortune, there's a twinge of guilt from knowing that every purchase pushes up the size of your carbon footprint.
Must one give up on salads on these made-for-salad days? Absolutely not. Just go 'glocal' by exploring the salad potential of local, seasonal produce and giving it a Western dressing. Vegetable shops are brimming with native harvests of green jackfruit, banana stem, eggplant, pumpkin - all waiting to make the leap from subzi kadai to salad bowl. All it takes is the willingness to experiment and a bit of imagination to watch these native elements that usually grace spicy bhartas, charcharis and dalnas (Bengali mixed-veg items), make up light, cosmopolitan ensembles.
That's what I found myself doing recently when having to rustle up a salad lunch for my girlfriends. At the vegetable stall I frequent at New Market in Kolkata, I bought the last of the green jackfruit, their spiny carapaces slit open to reveal khaki flesh;plump green pumpkins;a bunch of vividly green plantains, shiny eggplant and - in a fit of daring because I had never handled it before - a log of young banana stem. To supplement these vegetables, I picked up some salad regulars: tomatoes, onions, green capsicum, lemons and bunches of basil and mint.
Back home I considered my options. Salads are the multi-media installations of the culinary world. They're all about combining textures and colors and playing with seasoning. Sharp, citric notes are mellowed with the sweetness of honey;overtones of pungent garlic and flaked chilli add edginess to the lazy, golden fragrance of olive oil. You can be as creative as you want, letting your imagination and the contents of your fridge guide you.
I decided on four salads. The meaty jackfruit - a resilient character in taste and texture, combines well with finely sliced white onions and quartered, military-red tomato. Green pumpkin, sliced in thin crescents that hold on to their pretty, mint-striped jackets, introduces a softer, feminine touch to the jackfruit's masculine flavour. Plantains being subtle and on the soft side of al dente (think fresh artichoke hearts) should be partnered with a crunch that doesn't overshadow. A shower of pomegranate seeds is ideal. As cooking tinges banana stem pale pink, brown rice provides the perfect canvas to set it off. And while eggplant allows you to take all sorts of liberties with it, I love best what the people of the Middle East do with it - marry the smoked flesh with the time-tested combination of tomato, basil, oregano, garlic and olive oil.
The convenient part about making indigenous salads is that you have to prepare them ahead of a meal. Most of these vegetables have to be steamed or boiled and must be dressed while still warmish in order to allow the flavors to penetrate. Thereafter, you can leave them to rest in a state of osmosis and they won't turn limp or have unseemly puddles of dressing forming around them.
I cubed and boiled the jackfruit and, because it was not too mature, retained the seeds. The seeds of older jackfruits, along with the thin integument that protects them, must be removed. It's quite simple but if you have an obliging vegetable vendor you could get him to do it.
After being segmented, the green pumpkin needs just a few minutes in the steamer to cook. The plantains were pressure-cooked in a jiffy - inside their thick coats to stop the delicate cream coloring from deteriorating to drab grey. The banana stem - soaked in warm water, then sliced into matchsticksize pieces and pressure-cooked with a pinch of salt and turmeric - emerged blushing from its steam bath.
I charred the eggplant on the hob and removed the skins from the soft, slightly sweet, smoky chunks of flesh. Tomatoes were halved and slathered in olive oil. Then they were placed on a baking tray, studded with garlic cloves, sprinkled with sea salt, and a smattering of sugar (a precaution against the tartness of summer tomatoes), and popped into a medium oven. They emerged wrinkled and bursting with intense flavour.
While the cooked ingredients cooled to just-warm, I made two large jars of vinaigrette using olive oil, lemon juice, honey, lots of freshly ground black pepper, salt, and chilli flakes. To one lot, I added a tablespoon of roughly pounded garlic (not the wishy-washy hybrid variety, but the real desi thing that's got a kick).
I tossed the pumpkin, jackfruit, tomato quarters and onions in an earthenware bowl with generous amounts of the garlic-infused vinaigrette.
The peeled plantains, I chopped into inch-long pieces and tossed with some julienned green capsicum and the non-garlic dressing. Halving a pomegranate and holding it high above the platter I whacked the side of the fruit with the flat part of a spoon. A few seconds of this and there was the expectant shower of rubies and drizzle of red juice creating the desired scarlet splatter-andstud finale.
I combined the banana stem with brown rice that had been cooked a little earlier and was still a little warm, and dressed the salad with the garlic-infused vinaigrette. And then, because it seemed to crave sweetness, I added some sliced mangoes that had been sitting in the fridge teetering on the edge of over-ripeness. A handful of chopped mint completed this mêlange.
The eggplant and oven-dried tomatoes were roughly chopped and blended with a generous fistful of basil leaves, torn to release their scented sweetness. A crumbling of hung curd, flecked with chili and streaks of olive oil and the ensemble was ready to go.
It was a lovely afternoon. The table was a riot of colors. And the girls were gratifyingly disbelieving that vegetables they had only tasted in dalnas, charcharis, curries and bharta had assumed whole different personas in delicious, healthy salads.
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