Salads

Salade verte d’hors-d’œuvre teaches restraint. Before you touch the saucepan for the beans, know one true thing: vinaigrette clings to dry vegetables and slides off wet ones. Water leaves the salad dull, heavy at the bottom, and strangely underseasoned. Dryness is not housekeeping; it is the technique.

The original entry assumed a garde-manger, the cold-station cook, with trays of prepared leaves and vegetables, not a saucier, a stockpot never off the fire, or a salamander. At home, a salad spinner, one small saucepan, and a mixing bowl replace that cold station honestly. I’ve given one balanced arrangement for four because a home cook needs quantities; the canon did not demand these exact vegetables, and neither do I.

Those trays and endless choices are brigade scaffolding. The dish itself is the proportion: mostly leaves, a few crisp contrasts, a restrained vinaigrette, and enough air in the bowl for everything to remain itself. One cook, one stove, one evening. Dry every element completely before the vinaigrette touches it. That is the step that decides the salad.