Salade Lacmé

Salade Lacmé (curried white-rice salad with red capsicum and tomato sauce) teaches separation. The rice must be cooked plain, rinsed cold, spread wide, and allowed to lose its surface moisture before dressing. Fold warm or wet rice into the salad and the grains cling together; begin with cold, dry rice and each one stays itself.

The original entry assumed a garde-manger, the cold-pantry station, reaching for boiled rice already chilled, red capsicums peeled beneath a salamander, and tomato sauce sent over by a saucier. At home, the broiler blisters the pepper, a saucepan handles the rice, and a good thick plain tomato sauce needs no professional batch behind it. The brigade's tubs of prepared components are scaffolding and can go. The equal measures of capsicum and tomato sauce, the very white rice, the ciselé onion washed and pressed, and the curry-seasoned oil and vinegar are the dish and must stay. What changed is the batch size and equipment, not the proportions or intent. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished salad is cool, lightly glossy, and pleasantly sharp, with sweet red pepper against restrained curry and onion that gives texture without shouting across the table. Before anything else, clear space on a tray: spreading the rice wide until it is cold and dry is the step that decides the dish.