L. and I often have mixed salads as a dinner appetizer, which basically is a salad of whatever greens and veggie odds and ends I have around. A salade composée is definitely a horse of a different color, in that it is more elaborate and fully calculated. Not to be overly fanciful but, If my mixed salad is a young woman with wet hair who has just thrown on jeans and a white tee and looks great, a salade composée is the equivalent of a perfectly coiffed, well preserved matron, elegant in a tailored Chanel suit, (but one who accessorizes with unexpected, fanciful twists and who has a twinkle in her eye...) In my mind at least, a salade composée is, as per the name, composed, planned and thought out before execution. A mixed salad, while good, is just thrown together.
The autumn salade composée above was made in honor of my friend from college who has a keen eye for pretty things and who I thought would appreciate this colorful concoction for a pre-movie brunch. Since she is of Lebanese origin, the fact that I had decided to dress this salad with a saffron vinaigrette and homemade roasted garlic labneh somehow felt fitting. It also got me thinking of other salades composées and what I thought of as "the rules" for creating a stellar one.
First choose your base carefully. I opted for mixed baby leaves for their soft texture and different visually pleasing shapes and shades of green, and added thinly sliced red cabbage for crunch, as well as to bring out the purple hued veins of some of the green leaves.
Then add your vegetables. You should really have a selection of different shapes, sizes, textures and colors for a proper salade composée. I cut purple potatoes, yellow onion, orange carrots, white kohlrabi and tiny red beets into shapes and sizes that would take about the same time to cook, drizzled them with olive oil and a generous shaking of salt, and roasted them in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes until they were caramelized on the outside and juicy and tender within. 20 minutes into cooking time, I did the same thing with some green beans and added them to the roasting tray. I had some lovely purple radishes but kept those raw and crunchy and sliced them thinly before adding them to the cooled to room temperature vegetables atop the salad.
I then added some extra items for flavor - some sliced, roasted poblano peppers for a tiny occasional kick of heat and some chopped spring onion for a bit of zing and more vibrant color. I considered adding chopped hard boiled egg or anchovies or croutons but decided to keep the salad vegetable focused. Herbal notes are always nice in this type of salad and I meant to add tarragon leaves but forgot to do so during assembly.
Dressing is next and a most important step! You need to add it bit by bit and toss each time - you want each leaf and vegetable to be glossy and lightly coated with a sheen of vinaigrette and not end up with a dish of leaves and vegetables drowning in a pool of dressing. You can use your regular dressing, the one you use daily, or you can make a special one, because this is a special salad. For this, I soaked a generous pinch of saffron in a teaspoon of boiling water and, as soon as the water had cooled and turned a rich, orange-red, added it to some red wine vinegar in a bowl along with a pinch of salt, and emulsified it with some olive oil. Not that complicated, but it added some additional flavor to the mix.
I gilded the lily further by dolloping on some homemade roasted garlic labneh for a bit of additional flavor.
A final toss, some salt if needed, and your salad is ready to meet the world, be admired, and then devoured.
This works with any variation of vegetable, dressing and add-on, and you can riff off of these basic guidelines however you please, just take the season into account. You are really only limited by availability of produce and your imagination! You can make your salad as elaborate as you want but think it through first - layer flavors that will all come together at the end and make for a cohesive salad with different "companion" tastes in each bite. In the case of this salad this means the individual vegetable flavors, highlighted with zingy spring onion, slightly metallic saffron, mellow roasted garlic, spicy poblano and cool yogurt, ensuring that each bite was slightly different, and that the salad wasn't a flat, little Johnny one note affair (or a mess of warring ingredients, each vying to be heard).
I hadn't made a proper one of these in a long time and I found composing it curiously meditative and enjoyable. I have the notion that there will be more of these on the menu in the months to come...What are you going to use, now that you are primed to make one?
I served this with serrano ham and fennel seed bread rolls and, because we went to college together and shared many a midnight snack and/or pizza, rice krispy treats (with which L. disappeared into his room after we had each had one).
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