My husband grew up in Ireland and he has mixed feelings about the food he ate growing up. The main meal was “dinner,” which was eaten in the middle of the day, and was usually a piece of overcooked meat with criminally overcooked vegetables and the ubiquitous (but justly beloved) spuds. His worst horror stories concern something called “celery in cream sauce.” I myself once experienced this dish. It consists of huge, stringy pieces of boiled celery drenched in a white sauce (probably from a packet), which curdles with the fluids leaching out of the boiled celery. While I enjoy almost all foods (with the exception of beef liver and uni), I understand how celery in cream sauce could be traumatic.
He does speak with great fondness, however, of “tea,” the lighter evening meal served with — you guessed it — tea as the accompanying beverage. This would sometimes be sandwiches made with “doorstops” of fresh bread and “lashings” of butter, sometimes a “mixed grill” of sausages and eggs, or sometimes — in the summertime — a salad. Their salad would contain soft butter lettuce, beets, boiled eggs, and leftover meat or “tinned” (canned) salmon. It would be drizzled with “salad cream” — a bottled salad dressing that is essentially a looser, sharper, more vinegary mayonnaise.
I’ve tried to use my husband’s descriptions of his tea-time salads as an inspiration for informal composed salads, which we both love. Canned salmon, very popular in Ireland, is an under-appreciated pantry item in the U.S. The salmon that they can is wild salmon, and the canning process softens the bones so that you can eat them, making it an excellent source of calcium as well as the famed omega-3 fatty acids.
This evening, he wanted salmon, but I felt like eating my leftover steak from Bobby Van’s. So I made two different variations of the salad. My ingredients included some delicious Country Hen eggs (from Sang Lee’s farmstand), boiled that morning, Catapano goat cheese, Sang Lee mesclun (from my CSA), North Fork greenhouse tomatoes (from Sang Lee’s farmstand), red scallions (from my CSA), and my own marinated local beets.
I tossed the mesclun together with the scallions, tomatoes, some goat cheese and mint, and dressed it with oil, vinegar, fleur de sel, and pepper.
Then I plated it all up.
And served it.
The perfect summer weeknight dinner.
I don’t think I would ever have made a lovely composed salad like this if my husband hadn’t inspired me with his descriptions of his childhood salad teas. How has your cooking been changed by the people you cook for?
farmhopper 