There are two types of salads in this world, as far as a I have noticed. There is the leafy, chunky, lotsabits but mainly lettuce types, and then there is the chopped to bits swilling in dressing kind. I can only make the first kind, mainly due to an incipent laziness and real lack of skill in dicing anything.But I really like the second kind. Anyway, until this morning I always considered the second kind to be more professional and impressive (mainly based on the extensive and exceedingly good salad repetoire of Alex Thompson). Now though I am questioning this as it strikes me that the main difference between leafy and dicey is in the dressing.
One reason I like a leafy salad is dressing it. I love getting my hand in the bowls, tossing the dressing all over the bushy leaves, coating them a ramshackle way before I fling all the other bits (some salami, tomatos, hardboiled eggs) in. With the chopped salad however the dressing can be ladled on and then stirred in with a wooden spoon. The entire thing is uniformly dressed and usually very tasty. But the key point is, you don’t get your hands dirty.
If I consider the licking of the remnents of the salad dressing off of my fingers as a part of the salad experience then I realise that I rather like the way I make salads too. And I think from now on, tossing and licking should be considered all part of the salad experience.