My mother has always prided herself on her huge american-style salads which are a combination of everything available at the market-place including lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers bell peppers, fennel, sprouts, onions and radishes. And if it happens to be taking the place of a meal, she’ll add some form of protein such as cheese, tuna or hard-boiled eggs to boot. But it doesn’t stop here. On top of this goes a generous quantity of her favorite salad dressing made of oil, vinegar (or lemon), garlic, mustard powder, Worcestershire sauce, dill, salt and pepper.
This type of salad goes against the grain of most Italians who believe that salad should be eaten after the second course in order to clean the palate in preparation for fruit and dessert. Thus the simpler the dressing the better, ie: oil and salt. Furthermore, this provides an excellent opportunity to appreciate the prescious extra-virgin, cold-pressed olive oil many have combed the Ligurian, Tuscan, Umbrian, Campanian or Puglian countrysides to find.
I have come to appreciate both types of salads, but I have an italian friend who told me the Neapolitan proverb on salads and it seemed to me the perfect balance between the two. First the lettuce is mixed in an earthenware pot that has been rubbed with garlic. Then, she said, it takes 3 people to make the dressing:
“Un prodigo per l’olio, un’avaro per l’aceto e un saggio per il sale”…
“A spendthrift for the oil, a miser for the vinegar and a sage for salt.”