BS: salad first or salad after

Subject: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,Q. Cumber
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 11:35 AM

All my life I've been having my dinner salad before the main course, usualy first, or second if there's soup.

But last night I went to dinner at Martin and Elizabeth's house and they served the salad after the main course and before the desert.

What was up with that?

Is it a British thing? Elizabeth is from England.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 11:46 AM

Some do ... in North East England it's common to have the salad after the main course: palate cleanser.

When serving the national dish of roast beer and Yourkshire pudding, some northerners have the Yorkie pub with gravy as a first course on its own.

They're strange tho' ...

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 11:47 AM

should have been 'roast beef' ... Freudian slip?

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 11:52 AM

It's salad first for me, and finished before starting on the main course. But my wife will eat hers at any time during the meal. She'll often eat about half of it before the main course, nibble a bit during the main course and finish it off as desert. And, no, she's not from some exotic country. Just Indiana.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Peace
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 11:54 AM

" salad first or salad after "

Absolutely. I prefer it first unless I am at an all-you-can-eat place. Then it's after. Logistics thing. Sometimes--when life is kickin' along good, salad IS supper.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:01 PM

After is better for your digestion

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:12 PM

in a restauraunt I have gotton used to having salad first. But when eating at home - frequently it is either salad WITH the main course - or after.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Layah
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:19 PM

I hadn't heard of people having salad after the main course. For me salad comes before everything. Except maybe appetizers. Salad comes before soup though.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:21 PM

I don't understand this salad before or after stuff. I like to eat my salad along with my main course. I think salads are a good accompaniment to a main course. Nice blend of flavors and textures.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:27 PM

Carol's got the right of it. Salad belongs on the side of the plate, next to whatever goes with it. Good with macaroni cheese.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Layah
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:32 PM

But if you have salad and dinner on your plate at the same time then the dressing gets into your food. I hate my foods touching, infecting eachother. Although Brits don't appear to use salad dressing very often. Except salad cream, which is just disgusting. Which reminds me of brown sauce, because it comes in little packets and so does salad cream. Brown sauce worries me because I'm wary of a food product best described by it's color. The only other one I can think of is orange, and fruits aren't as scary as unknown sauces in little packets.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:34 PM

the French do salad after, so that's what I got used to, and they also use vinaigrettes rather than creamy dressings. The upshot is that if you're full after the main course, the salad after lightens the load and you have more room for dessert. But it doesn't work with thick dressings, it has to be the consistency of the vinegar, or maybe a little mustardy.
And the "trou normand" - the little ball of apple sherbert with apple brandy on it - does cleanse the palate - you're not only less full but you have no gustatory memory of the course you just finished. Amazing.
If you're dieting, salad first so you don't have that extra room for dessert.
Salad with italian food, though, I love the mixture of spaghetti sauce on lettuce and salad dressing on pasta.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:43 PM

We usually eat it after, but we live in Idaho after all. Sometime a salad IS dinner.

But we do as the Romans do.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Mingulay
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 12:46 PM

My late uncle Cyril held no truck with the seperate course theory of eating. His Sunday lunch would consist of a roast meat with vegetables and gravy accompanied by apple pie and custard ALL ON THE SAME PLATE. As he quite rightly pointed out it all ended up in the same place anyway. I am of the opposite persuasion and hate meat and fruit together, yes, even gammon and pineapple. Not overly keen on salad either, if God had meant us to eat green leaves we would all have been born with buck teeth and long floppy ears.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 01:01 PM

You have your salad in a separate salad bowl which you place next to the dish with the entree.

I make my own dressings. My favorite:

Hazelnut oil
Champagne or white wine vinegar
Sugar
Freshly ground salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Ust the oil-to-vinegar ratio that you find most pleasing. Add a small amount of sugar (a teaspoon or less, dependig on how much you make). Add the freshly ground salt and pepper, and whisk with a fork until you get something resembling an emulsion. You have to whisk it while serving if you don't want to get all oil or all vinegar in one serving.

My second favorite:

Extra virgin (very fruity) olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Crushed garlic
Sugar
Freshly ground salt
Freshly ground pepper

You can add some fresh basil and/or rosemary to that, but I think it's great without any herbs at all.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 01:06 PM

My last was for Layah.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Charmion
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 03:22 PM

It depends entirely on the menu.

In a large, formal meal, the courses alternate: light and astringent, followed by rich and stodgy, followed by light and astringent again. So if you're stinking rich and you haven't eaten for a week, you might start your meal with, say, tomato bisque (a rich cream soup). You would then have your salad, with vinaigrette dressing, and follow that with a fish course -- say, poached prawns with curry mayonnaise. Then you'd take a little rest, and move on the "plat principal", a rack of lamb, perhaps, which would be followed by a tiny sherbet to cleanse the palate and brace you for dessert, which is probably something mousse-y, with a wafer. Then comes cheese, accompanied by nuts and port if you're lucky, and perhaps a cigar if you have access to a porch.

In a less formal meal, the same alternating pattern still applies: light and astringent followed by rich and stodgy (or the other way around). If the entire meal is on one plate -- well, then you pack stuff in alternating layers on the back of your fork!

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Peace
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 03:24 PM

I have the salad on the burger.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: artbrooks
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 03:44 PM

Before, when at a restaurant (because that's when they bring it in the States), or with supper.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:29 PM

Except salad cream, which is just disgusting.

You mean ... shurely ... "which I don't care for."

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Layah
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:48 PM

shurely, or even surely, but don't call me Shirley. Of course dislike of salad cream is my own personal opinion and no slight was meant to any salad cream out there, or even to people who eat salad cream. Onions, on the other hand, are spawn of the devil and therefore anyone who likes onions are devil worshipers. Evil.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Peace
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 05:01 PM

Love onions--fart like a trooper after I eat them. Especially the sweet pickled kind. Just thought I'd share that with everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Peace
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 05:04 PM

Leeks do it, too.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: sue exhull
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 05:47 PM

Oi big pink lad!! Im one of 'North East Strange' People!! Im from East Yorks and we always had our yorkshire pud with the meal, A mate from Leeds, West Yorks, always served yorkshires before meal with gravy, thats so you will be full and wont eat much Beef!!! We North easts arent that bloody tight!

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 05:58 PM

We eat salad after the main course, but lately I've lost interest in serving it. Here's a reasonable-looking site which lists the vitamin contents of vegetables. You will notice that lettuce, the main ingred of most salads, doesn't even have vitamins.

http://www.healthalternatives2000.com/vitchart.htm

I have decided that the main role of lettuce is to sit forgotten in the fridge and spoil. Lettuce is a common source for food poisoning, so I've read. Its main role is to hold up the fattening salad dressing.

Now, a salad made of cut-up, home-grown tomatoes with green pepper or cucumber - now that's food. We eat it after the main course.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 06:12 PM

I've read that salad-first is an American thing; Europeans (well, the French anyway) had served salad after the main course, but somebody in the US decided to go the opposite way. Perhaps just to be contrary, I don't know.

In restaurants here, salad is served before the entree, but not always "first" ~ if you're having soup or some other appetizer course plus a salad plus an entree, the salad might be second. (I think.)

At home, we usually have it either before the main course, OR as the "vegetable" portion of the main meal, simultaneously with meat-or-fish and potato-or-rice-or-pasta. Either way, it's usually in a separate small bowl rather than on the same plate with the rest.

The main food value of lettuce is as roughage (fiber), an aid to the, er, final stages of digestion ~ not as a source of nutrients. When you get to be my age, you'll appreciate the value of roughage. ;^)

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Layah
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 06:13 PM

I was in France last winter and I went to a restaurant and they served salad before the main course.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,Nina Nana
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:37 AM

Layah is v.v. stupid if he thinks sauces only come in packets.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: Layah
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:01 PM

SHE never claimed that sauce only comes in packets. There are a set of sauces that come in packets, but these can also all be found bottles or jars. There are also sauces that come in bottles and jars but never in packets. So sauce in packets is a subset of total sauces, all of which are available in bottles.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:10 PM

Generally I'd prefer not to have salad. It's a nuisance rather than a food. Salad's a lot better when it doesn't contain lettuce, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:31 PM

salad first or salad after

Now wait just a brightly-blessed minute. Who says you can make me eat salad at all? This is a clear case of proselytizing for salad. When will people realize this is a diverse forum, and stop trying to shove salad down everyone's throats? I mean, TWO salad threads right now, not even couting the incursion of pro-salad remarks in the spatula threads. It's too much! I'm up to HERE with all this salad business. I suppose next it will be which croutons-- I try to keep in mind that all croutons are crouted equal.

~Susan ;~)

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: KateG
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 05:31 PM

If I understand my culinary history, Salad is most properly served after the main course, as they still do in France. However, restaurants serve it before the main course to keep you from eating the table cloth while waiting for your main course to be served.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 06:46 PM

Isn't the correct term "prosaladising"?

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 10:17 PM

Oh.... you got meeeeeeeeeee...............

[falls over dead]

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 11:05 PM

Loved your posts, Wysiwig!

Poppagator, if you want roughage, then eat cracked wheat bread, shredded wheat, Triscuits or those wussy crackers whose names no one knows but they feel like SOS pads.

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 11:13 PM

Thanks, leenia!

But for roughage-- no! The BEST roughage (seriously) is water-soluble. Oat bran. Oat bread. The other stuff is like a coarse broom in the gut. Bulky, but scouring. Oats, on the other hand, absorb water and make a nice fluffy cushion in there that stabilizes everything else in there with it.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: salad first or salad after
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 06 Feb 05 - 07:51 PM

Salad with. Rarely instead of. Soometimes no salad at all. But it's ok if you like it with ice cream or in your cornflakes. Why not?

clint