Salads: The summer staple
From heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn to juicy peaches and crispy cucumber slices, summers are all about hearty and flavourful salads. “Salads in summers are absolutely great and easy to make. It ensures hydration in the body, which is detoxifying,” says chef Nishant Chaubey.
Sharing a tip to make the perfect salad, chef Manish Sharma says, “Ideally, summer salads should be light, refreshing, fruity and healthy. Soak leafy greens in chilled water first, for some time, and rinse to remove water. This will make them crunchy.” Chef Varun Inamdar suggests washing raw veggies and fruits thoroughly before eating, cutting, blanching or cooking them. “A quick blanch is always advisable while tossing up a vegetarian salad,” he says.
A quick scroll through the web for popular salad preparations, and you come across the basic iceberg lettuce salads, mouth-watering sesame cucumber salad, flavourful tomato panzanella that uses sourdough bread instead of greens. Acknowledging its wide variety, Inamdar feels that salads are a large canvas if one knows their craft well. “So many ingredients can be added in. In fact, most immunity building ingredients can be rustled up into a dressing – turmeric, garlic, ginger, cinnamon stick...the list can go on,” he adds.
Sharma believes a good dressing always compliments the ingredients and helps in getting the best flavour out of them. He says, “A typical dressing will have three parts of oil and one part vinegar. For a fruity dressing, you can also use fresh orange or lemon juice.”
Also, it’s important for the dressing to be fresh. “Make sure that the leaves or grains are tossed with dressing at the last minute. This would ensure freshness and crispiness,” suggests Chaubey.