“my salad days when I was green in judgment” – William Shakespeare
Something’s gotta give
One of the things I realised during lockdown was that although I have eaten healthily – wholefood and vegetarian – for 40 years, I had fallen into the habit of eating too much, too often. Indulging a love of carb-laden treats in cafés, sampling home baking + doing very little exercise = the lethal combination that catches up with you eventually. It was only a matter of time.
Lockdown habit
To get fitter and healthier for most is not a quick fix. It requires taking control for yourself, determination, incentive and a keen eye on the end goal. Lockdown provided those conditions and more. As the weeks rolled on, each one as routinely similar as the last, a revised way of eating set in, helped by a lack of distractions and diversions. Also helped by paring things back to a level of stripped down simplicity. My new eating regime proved sustainable and the benefits could be felt. It’s a way of eating that appeals to me – no shortage of flavours, textures, colours, plenty of ballast and no whiff of depriving yourself. Preparing and eating food remains enjoyable. Happy munching.
The good old salad days
My generation grew up with the plate salad as we liked to call it. And we did like to call it – boring, monotonous, “rabbit” food. Deftly arranged lettuce leaves (only one or two types), cucumber and tomato slices (not even wedges – too hefty), spring onions (more recently rebranded as salad or bunched onions) and a radish flower for fancy occasions when you had both iced water and time to hand. A slice of boiled ham, tongue, tinned salmon or a Kraft cheese triangle if you were really lucky. New potatoes and a dollop of salad cream (runny mayonnaise for the uninitiated).
These were the “salad days” of 1963 which saw the first pressing of Barbara Hammond’s “Cooking Explained” (a Home Economist’s bible) and there were RULES FOR MAKING SALAD spelt out in block capitals. The advice was to arrange salad ingredients attractively and strive to keep them looking unhandled. I did not strive in this direction. I do though believe that how food is presented matters and contributes to its appeal and enjoyment.
Left unders
When my mum was out at tea-time we would be left a plate salad, covered with a tea-towel (a clean one, mind). What lurked beneath was rarely a surprise. Plastic wrap was still considered “new fangled” and what a shame this ubiquitous food covering ever caught on. The only other salads I knew until I left home at 18 were potato salad and coleslaw both laden with gloop. There were few variations or substitutions and salad didn’t have a great press.
Wharf St Café, Jill Gibson 
Cranks, Paul Williams
Salads but not as we knew them
Roll on the 1980’s when I frequented wholefood cafés – Wharf Street Cafe, Leeds; Cranks, London; Food for Friends and Terre à Terre, Brighton; On the 8th Day, Manchester; Henderson’s, Edinburgh; The Moon, Kendal; York Wholefood and Sarah Brown’s Terrace Project, Scarborough to name some memorable trail-blazers. The plate salad was a thing of the past. Move over for platters full of salads and helping yourself from a salad bar groaning with plantiferous variety. Choice, flexibility, creativity – anything goes!
Ideas migrate
People travelling between continents and those migrating with ideas about ingredients and cuisines did much to enrich the UK’s home grown food culture. As did the increase in eating out and taking away food, plus TV programmes and recipe books from such writers as Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey, introducing other ways of putting food together.
Take-aways, pubs, supermarkets, delis and fast food chains such as Leon, Pret and Itsu can be proud of salad offerings which hold their own alongside other dishes. And specialist food companies too deserve a shout-out including Belazu who manufacture Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern ingredients so that these flavours and traditions can be enjoyed at home.
Our food would be less than it is today without those who migrated to the UK and established businesses here. There are many more unsung heroes but examples of some who have influenced our food map are Kaushey and Mohan Patel from India who established Prashad in Yorkshire, Skye Gyngell from Australia who worked at Petersham Nurseries and then set up Spring, both in London and the Israeli chef and author Yotam Ottolenghi who made Middle Eastern food and ingredients popular with his restaurants in London where salad platters take centre stage.
It seems salad days are no longer limited to green …