Add some texture to your salads

Singing the glory of puffed rice salads

For years I always thought of a salad as more of a condiment than a main course. Sometimes, thin slices of crisp red onions and a fresh green chile alongside a quartered tomato were all my dad had on his dinner plate for his “salad.” A sprinkling of salt and a squirt of lime juice formed the dressing. They were simple yet delicious.

Once I moved to America, however, I slowly started to loosen the old rule that salads can’t stand on their own. Most of the salads I now prepare at home follow a couple of unspoken guidelines: dramatic textures, bold contrasting flavors and, of course, fresh vegetables. The dressings I find myself most attracted to are those with a good dose of sour, sweet and salty. Sometimes, the addition of anchovies or powdered nutritional yeast can help increase the depth of savoriness.

This Puffed Rice Salad is a dish that follows those principles of contrasting flavors and bold textures. It contains rice and chickpea flour, both prepared in interesting ways: There are puffed grains of rice called murmura and thin threads of chickpea flour called sev. Murmura and sev form the backbone of many Indian snacks, like bhel drizzled with sweet and sour tamarind sauce (commonly eaten on the streets of Mumbai), and Bengal’s jhalmuri, a treat of crunchy peanuts and lentils.

Just as a kernel of popcorn blows up when heated, so does a grain of rice. The starch and moisture trapped inside the seed start to expand, which makes it bloom into an airy, puffy cloud. Puffed rice is like a sponge, absorbing liquid with ease, which means it can go from crunchy to soft in a matter of minutes. (This is why it’s best to add liquids just before serving the murmura.)

Sev is made from chickpea flour, fried into threads and used as a texture booster in many Indian recipes. The threads come in varying degrees of thickness at Indian grocers; the variety called nylon is thin and delicate.

While most people who grew up in India eating snacks made from these ingredients would refrain from calling them salad, I’ve strayed.

I often add puffed rice and sev to my salads when I am fatigued by the usual mixed salad greens, kale or lettuce. They bring me joy with their textural elements. I use whatever vegetables I have on hand — the less watery the better. The dressing of sweet date syrup mixed with fresh lime juice adds the right nudge of sweet and sour that brings this salad together.

It’s an unconventional salad, yet one that feels remarkably familiar.

Nik Sharma’s first solo cookbook is “Season” (Chronicle Books). Twitter/Instagram: @abrowntable Email: food@sfchronicle.com