My friend’s husband said that he was sick and tired of eating “salad.”   My friend was surprised; their dinners had recently had more variety than usual, she thought.  That was true of the ingredients, she realized, but not of the dishes.  Caesar salad, Waldorf salad, Chef Salad, Salad Nicoise, Cobb salad, and Caprese salad (sliced fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil) had all been on the menu in the past two weeks.  It appeared that it wasn’t that he was tired of the food; in fact, he was tired of the word.  

This post is a call to the chefs of America:  Create dishes for us.  Name them, and drop the word “salad.”  Of course it’s a salad.  According to the dictionary, salad is a mixture of vegetables or fruits, often with a sauce or dressing, sometimes with meat, fish, pasta or cheese, served as either an appetizer, side, or main dish.  Well, I’d say, that about covers it!

Any combination of greens, vegetables, meats, fish, or fruit makes a salad and then some.  Here’s what I mean: pasta salad, rice salad, macaroni salad, potato salad; Greek salad; Israeli salad; eggplant salad; cabbage salad, parsley salad, green salad, tomato salad, cucumber salad, roasted beet salad; fruit salad; egg salad; tuna salad, whitefish salad, crab salad, salmon salad; chicken salad, turkey salad; ham salad; three-bean salad, chickpea salad, and Michigan salad (greens with dried cherries, blue cheese, and vinaigrette).

Enough!  Give us fatoush, antipasto, cole slaw, baba ganoush, tabouli, and panzanella.

Blaze a trail for arugula, sauteed mushrooms, crumbled hard-boiled egg, and diced red onion!  Give it a name!  Don’t call it arugula-mushroom-onion-hard-boiled-egg salad.  Call it, I don’t know, Symon Sez.  Or Downtown.  Just don’t call it salad.  

How about red bell pepper slices, a bit of watercress (or romaine), and thin peels of carrot tossed in lightly in olive oil and a sprinkle of salt?  I’d call this one Fire.

I’m thinking about the ingredients, all the different kinds of lettuces at the market, all the nuts and seeds, all the cheeses (cubed, crumbled, or grated), the edible flowers, the rainbow of vegetables, the fish, the meats, the exotics (like artichokes), the olives of every color and size, and the hundreds of possible dressings, none of which contain corn syrup.  

There are tossed salads (like a Caesar), composed salads (with the ingredients placed precisely, like a Nicoise), bound salads (stuck together, like tuna).  The possibilities are clearly infinite, and to place them all in the same category is confusing.  

Chefs of America, make us not just an American cuisine, but a nomenclature, with real names for real dishes.

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