Ensalada Catalana con Embutits

Ensalada Catalana, amanida catalana in Catalan, belongs to Catalonia: a green salad made sturdy with embutits, the cured and cooked sausages of the region. Lettuce, tomato, onion, olives, fuet, and botifarra blanca or negra. That is what makes it this salad and not just leaves with cold meat scattered on top.

The method that decides it is small but it matters: dry the lettuce properly and season the vegetables before the embutits go on. Wet leaves make the oil slide off and leave the salad tasting thin. Salt the tomato and onion first, give them a few minutes, then dress with good olive oil and a little vinegar so the juices make their own honest dressing in the bottom of the bowl.

If you're far from Catalonia, no hace falta haber pisado España. Use the closest real substitutes: a good dry salami for fuet, plain cooked pork sausage for botifarra blanca, and blood sausage only if it is firm enough to slice cold. What changes is the perfume: fuet is lean, garlicky, and peppery, softer than chorizo and without the pimentón weight. No chorizo here. It belongs to other dishes, and it drags this one away from Catalonia.

Serve it soon after dressing, with bread beside it for the oil and tomato juices. This is weeknight food, picnic food, a full plate from a modest larder. Pésalo, no lo adivines, and don't drown it in vinegar. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.