Plating salad

I'm getting bored with (greens-based) salads just piled on the middle of a plate. Sure, the variety of ingredients and dressings makes them fun, but I'm looking for a more creative way of presenting. Anyone have any cool ideas?

[Robin Garr]

I'm getting bored with (greens-based) salads just piled on the middle of a plate. Sure, the variety of ingredients and dressings makes them fun, but I'm looking for a more creative way of presenting. Anyone have any cool ideas?

At home, Eden, we just put a salad bowl in the middle of the table and do self-service with tongs.

One little place near us has kind of a cool house-salad plating idea that looks and tastes good, if you aren't opposed to "vertical food." They slice a long, thin strip of cucumber and use it to form a cylinder, which is then set upright on the plate, filled with mesclun, topped with some sprouts or other garnish and drizzled with vinaigrette, both on the salad and decoratively around the plate.

You could try doing a composed salad. Take things like tiny roasted potatoes, seared asparagus tips, seared scallion ends, thin carrot ribbons, thin radish coins, and halved cherry tomatoes. Stack all of the stick looking things in a neat pile, arrange the ribbons, coins, potatoes and tomatoes around the pile. Then give a small sprinkling of greens rather than the usual pile. Drizzle the whole thing with your favorite vinaigrette and enjoy!

rwj

There seems to be a restaurant trend, in this area at least, of moving from salad plates back to bowls. One, fairly upscale place we like to frequent, has even gone back to those detestible artificial wood plastic bowls! The salad is still nice, but we are not frequenting as much any more.

Setting aside the possible variety of ingredients, here are two ways to vary green salads:

Chopped salads - chop up the green part so that it's around the same size as the other stuff, typically 1/2" square or cube. For example greens, salami, corn and tomatoes. Or greens, apple, gruyere and walnuts. The flavors are the same, but somehow the effect in the mouth is more like a stir-fry and less like traditional salad.

Dip a leaf - Wash romaine (or similarly stiff leaves) and keep them whole. Then just dip them into a thick dressing, salsa or dip like you would a chip. Like buttermilk/parmesan/pepper puree, or artichoke dip or romesco sauce.

[Jenise]

Eden, since I serve salad as a first course at 6 out of 7 dinners, I too am always looking for ways to make this course look fresh. Unfortunately, the very nature of a lettuce leaf, both shape and softness, doesn't lend itself to all that much reinvention.

Leaving heads whole (iceberg lettuce wedge) or dressing and reassembling a la Thomas Keller's bibb lettuce salad with chives and dijon vinaigrette, though, are both one way. I was once quite impressed with a romaine lettuce 'caesar' I had in one of Joachim Splichal's restaurant--in the latter, whole leaves were painted with dressing and then assembled/molded in a box form before being inverted onto a plate, a perfect rectangle. The plate was also rectangular--very cool.

Then there are molded salads--we love a chopped version of a Cobb salad made with chiffonaded nappa cabbage, tomato, bacon, red onion and blue cheese. Toss with a strong dressing and let it rest for about ten minutes before packing into a small bowl--the cabbage wilts slightly without getting soggy and really holds it's shape well once inverted.

Using the salad to spotlight a non-salad ingredient is also quite successful: panko-crust some thick slices of cylindrical goat cheese, and then pan fry to golden brown. Serve one per person on a nest of micro greens. Pan-fry a half a head of frissee and top it with a scallop, or cascade a handful of bay shrimp over a chunk of raw frisee.

And try reversing the courses--we usually eat salad as a first course, but some days I bring a bowl of greens to the table with the dressing underneath, and we toss and serve it after our main course. It's kind of a relief sometimes to not have to get up and go back to the kitchen between courses. And it feels entirely different.

I you're talking just about a simple green salad, the variations available for plating are limited. If you are willing to add additional main ingredients, you can make the salad more interesting. Such as with a chicken-liver salad...



...or a duck gizzard salad...



Or if you want to be a little more decorative, a composed salad such as a niçoise...



...or a lyonnaise may be more to your liking.



I like to get away fom lettuce altogether and use ingredients like cauliflower...



...or eggplant...



...or even chicken and tomatoes...



...for salads.

Bravo, Peter!

rwj

Peter, all your salads look wonderful, but the eggplant looks even better than the others. Could you possibly tell us what you do to the eggplant. Of course, if this is a professional secret, just PM or email me and I will keep your secret. Heck, who care if others eat as well as I do.

Could you possibly tell us what you do to the eggplant. Of course, if this is a professional secret, just PM or email me and I will keep your secret. Heck, who care if others eat as well as I do. :)

See salade d’aubergines au citron confit. If you go to the recipe index on my site and search the word "salad", you’ll find about 40 recipes to peruse through.

Thanks for the links Peter. A few months ago I had to reformat my hard drive, and my bookmarks were among the items I never got back. I had your site bookmarked but had not replaced it since the crash. I have done so now. Thanks again, the salad sounds great, and the web site at the top of of the list of cooking sites.

Thanks, everyone! I suppose I don't mind so much for daily dinners (though never anything wrong with sprucing something up midweek!), but when I have people over, salad - no matter how tasty - often just looks THERE. Robin - no aversion to vertical, so the cucumber thing sounds like a tidy presentation (I imagine the cuke needs to be super thin to hold together?), and Jenise - lots of cool stuff in there! The "molded" salad sounded scary until you explained it, but now, I'm itching to give that a whirl. Thanks, again!

Here's some cheerful ideas...

Thank you, Mr. Lileks.

I like to lay a fan of inner romaine leaves on a plate and top with finely diced cukes (sans seeds), green onions, maybe tomato and whatever else - then lightly dress with vinegar and oil and top with thinly sliced flank or strip steak.

Or place the juicy unsliced steak on top of a piece of toasted ciabatta rubbed with a garlic clove at the base of the fan.

Now that's a salad.

Or place the juicy unsliced steak on top of a piece of toasted ciabatta rubbed with a garlic clove at the base of the fan.

Ok, Fred, now I'm hungry!