Experimental Cookery Tuesday #40: The Philosophy of a Great Salad, Pick-and-Mix Style

Another week, another salad.

This week we had the pick'n'mix salad, which sadly didn't involve a trip to Woolworths (or their successors) for a big bag of mixed sweeties. Instead, I was presented with a page showing a grid of ingredients, six rows of four items each. (There was also a secret seventh ingredient, being one of the "jam jar dressings".) The instruction was to pick one element from each row, and combine them.

In effect, therefore, this page presented a possible 16,384 combinations. Indeed, if one considered the possibility of a 'none' entry on each row, that number rises to 78125 combinations, although it should be noted that that includes a salad with nothing whatsoever in it, and also four made up of just the dressing but no actual content. (There is also the possibility of using two of more elements from a given row. I'm reasonably sure it is possible to have both cucumber and tomato in the same salad. This gives about 320,000,000 possible combinations, assuming you only ever use at most a single dressing.)

Obviously, I didn't try all these combinations. Instead, I tried only a single variant, combining a couple of lettuces, basil, celery and parmesan into a reasonably effective salad. It worked quite well, and was a distinct step up from the salads I grew so bored with some years ago. It could perhaps have done with some colour other than green - either switching the celery for tomatoes, or even daring to go off-book and use red (or yellow!) pepper instead.

I was rather disappointed with the dressing, though. Having now tried all four of the jam jar dressings, I can rate the French dressing as the best, followed closely by the lemon dressing, with the balsamic dressing some way behind, and with the yoghurt dressing a distant fourth. (Yesterday was the yoghurt dressing.) If I were scoring dressings, it would be a win by 3-1.

So, that's "The Philosophy of a Great Salad, Pick-and-Mix Style". It was a win, bringing the score to 4-3 in favour. Next week I tackle an "Everyday Chopped Salad". And I can finally see the light at the end of the chapter; there remain only four salads to go, and then I'm on to mince.