Two Picnic Salads for Those Who Don’t Picnic

And those who haven't realized the error of their ways

Full marks for imagery. Absolute fail for reality.

Can we discuss picnics?

People say they enjoy them, but I have my doubts.

I’ve tried picnicking. I know of which I speak.

Years back, I went to Dream in High Park (a Toronto summer stalwart. A Shakespeare play performed by the actors of the Canadian Stage in an outdoor, grass amphitheater under the stars, surrounded by soaring evergreens. It’s very popular with the posh Chardonnay-and-Brie set.)

Anyway, feeling the call of the artistic wild, I smuggled in a little (illegal) wine and (legal) cheese under my blanket. It was a grand and charmed image, but an utter failure when the realities of back aches and invading ants appeared in short order.

Undaunted, I tried again a few years later. An afternoon date with a very sexy, emotionally unavailable fellow and a basket brimming with icy champagne, aged Beemster cheese, and sweet, juicy cherries. It was thrillingly romantic sitting under that red flag. As my paramour leaned in for that first exhilarating kiss, an unleashed dog wandered by and pooped right beside us. Worse, he didn’t break eye contact whilst doing it. The dog. Not my date. Thank God.

I recently read Madhur Jaffrey’s memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees.

There’s a chapter where she writes about her family’s dedication to the picnic and all it involved. Which is to say, a lot.

Her family would spend hours preparing everything they needed, intricately pack 30 people in two cars (she gave specific instructions on how to accomplish this), and with the help of an infantry of servants, set out for an afternoon of leisurely al fresco dining in the dense Delhi heat.

Madhur claims to have loved it; I have trouble seeing the joy in shlepping a mountainous weight of grills and pots and coffee urns along with buckets of food to the great and stifling outdoors. And, as I discussed in an earlier Quaintrelle (the post is linked below), the food safety involved in summer dining is definitely, definitely something to be considered.

I’m not a total bahumbug. I do love eating outdoors, but it’s more of a patio/poolside/dockside enthusiasm. An open-air locale with easy access to refrigeration and plumbing.

Stand Facing the Stove

That, reportedly, is the first line in the first edition of Joy of Cooking, written in 1931 for hapless housewives, who were torpedoed from their mother’s house to their husband’s, and mystified at how to make a happy home and three, square meals a day. Irma Rombauer self-published what became one of America’s most important cook books as a way to guide the clueless cook to culinary victory, step-by-literal-step.

As I’ve mentioned before, I really think quite hard about the information I put in recipes, balancing, precariously, between what’s too much, and what’s not enough. Of course, I strive for a recipe that works, but also gives the reader the trust that they will use a bit of common sense and preference in their own cooking.

I was having a most enjoyable discussion in the comments section of David Leite’s recent post about recipes, and common pitfalls. There was no shortage of lively opinions.

The nut of my argument was I never include cooking times because who am I to say whether chopping an onion will take you two minutes or 15?

And when it comes to the delicate suggestions of portions, I’d rather say, “this makes 2 litres of soup” or, “a 9x13 lasagna pan” instead of suggesting a serving size. You can decide how far one lasagna will stretch in your house. (I’m not going to lie, when recipes state something can feed four people, I take it as a sort of personal challenge, and polish it off myself.)

So today’s submission for your next lunch or dinner affair, are two flexible salads.

The first, a pasta salad, is one people actually want to eat. This is not the gloppy, tasteless, mayo-based macaroni salads of 1970’s potlucks. The clumpy things weighing down the buffet that inexplicably have little bits of celery and olives and possibly ham mixed into the under-seasoned mess. No. My pasta salad is bright and fresh and gloriously flavourful. It has a snappy lemon-shallot vinaigrette, and spiked with tangy capers, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes. There’s a bit of heat from hot peppers, and lift from fresh basil, and extra flavour from a liberal shower of Parmesan. It’s a summer triumph, if I do say so myself.

The second is a stunningly good Vietnamese chicken salad, which, with handfuls of fresh herbs and an umami-laced fish sauce-based dressing, the flavour hits just keep on coming with every bite. It’s complex, but light; fresh, but deeply seasoned.

And both of these salads tick my summer hosting boxes: easily made ahead – the pasta lasts very well over night, and the chicken salad get even better a day or two later; they’re super simple to throw together, virtually no-cook, and exceptionally sturdy, so, if you are attempting a picnic or a day on the boat, these won’t wilt sitting a few hours in the cooler.

I’m still playing around with formatting, so please bear with me. But also let me know if you prefer having the downloadable PDF’s, which you can save and/or print, or if you would rather the recipe included in the body of this email.

Pasta Salad That People Actually Like

403KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Vietnamese Chicken Salad

476KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Wine Pairing

As you can see in the PDF’s, while simple, the ingredient list is long, which meant no more room for descriptive wine pairings which I like to offer.

For the pasta salad, its salty richness reminds me of the flavours of puttanesca. To counteract that savoury edge, go with a red wine that’s fruity, but lower in tannin, as the salad doesn’t have any protein to combat a grippy red wine. Try a Sicilian Frappato, served lightly chilled from a 10-minute dunk in an ice bucket.

For the Vietnamese chicken salad, garden herbs and verdant vegetables star in this show. The widely available and popular pick is an equally herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc, but if you can seek out a Grüner Veltliner, the white wine of Austria, you might find some luck in the road less travelled. Grüner has notes of celery, pea pod, and lentil which work brilliantly with salads of all kinds, but especially vegetable-prominent ones.

COCKTAIL IDEA

Food and Wine has just declared the Lemon Drop to be the cocktail of Summer 2024.

A bold statement perhaps, but one that has merit. A grown-up lemonade, this is a blend of vodka, lemon juice and orange flavoured liqueur. Some bartenders, naturally, are taking liberties with the recipe and adding rosemary syrup, blueberry vodka, or Limoncello for an extra layer of lemony goodness.

It might be a fun idea to multiply the recipe to create a pitcher full of lemon drops for your next backyard bash.

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Thanks for reading. Happy picnicking (don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

xo -Erin