You know where you’ll never find me? Anywhere near the lettuce wall at a grocery store. You see, I’m different now. More evolved. Less bogged down by the tyranny of lettuce and greens-forward salads being the One True Salad as defined by Big Lettuce.
COVID-19 changed a lot of people in a lot of ways. I worked as an essential worker at Trader Joe’s during most of it, which led me to become way more introverted, the complete opposite of a germaphobe, and 100% less likely to buy lettuce. What with all the salmonella and E. coli risks—and generally wanting to live life more deliciously—I found out that there was a garden variety of salads I could create without having to slog through kale/arugula/romaine like a time-crunched stegosaurus in a prehistoric salad swamp. In other words, if we have but one life to live, I’ll be spending it eating only the best part of a salad: the toppings.
Hear my plea: Free yourself from soggy, boggy bagged salads that linger too long in the crisper—and stop wasting money just to make a so-called “legitimate” salad. With no pesky lettuce in my way, the toppings-only salad opportunities are infinite and expansive and pull the focus away from the “supposed-to” filler and back onto the “want-to” (and still nutritious) good parts.
There’s the citrus salad I’ve adapted from Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, which I now call “The Zoloft Salad” because it’s impossible to feel depressed while eating it. Half-moons of oranges, avocados, and onions all get doused in a sunshine-y citrus dressing that makes me feel like I’ve morphed into the joyous, burbling Sun Baby from Teletubbies.
Then, there’s the wide array of non-lettuce salads that await you in Julia Turshen’s What Goes With What—most notably her cucumber avocado salad dressed with double the kimchi power as the base and dressing. I also can’t seem to get through the week without making Ali Slagle’s potato-salad-meets-sauce-gribiche salad (aka her “Broken Caesar”) in I Dream Of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To). Nor can I really say I’ve fully enjoyed summer without making Delish’s own lobster roll pasta salad that makes me feel like a long-lost member of the Kennedy family.
In truth, the beauty of a non-lettuce salad is that you can throw away the recipe altogether. Simply take your neighbor’s or coworker’s gifted tomatoes, brown some butter, layer it over the slices, and call it a day.
It goes without saying that anything can be caprese’d if you just believe (and have plenty of halloumi, mozzarella, or burrata on hand).
And don’t limit yourself to the tomatoes-only binary, especially when we live in a world where there are watermelons.
With toppings as your guide, you’ll find that the fridge becomes a Sweet Tomatoes-esque salad bar with jewel-toned beets, creamy beans, and smacked cucumbers as your canvas. Add a handful of spicy pecans, briny anchovy filets, sprigs of mint, or a base of funky kimchi. Go absolutely buck wild with avocado because why the hell not, you sweet summer Millennial? From there, your bowl’s capacity is the only thing stopping you. Long live “toppings only” salads!
