SC - Castelvetro & salads (long)

[Ann & Les Shelton]

Just got Castelvetro's "The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy" through
ILL yesterday {best $1.58 I've invested in a long time}, had to throw in
his comments about salads in spring:

"Salads:	And now the time has come for me to write about all the
different kinds of salads we have at this time of year.

It is almost impossible to describe our delight in the delicious green
salads of this joyful season.  The cooked salads we ate in the winter
seem so boring, while all this fresh greenery is a pleasure to the eye,
a treat for the palate, and above all, a really important contribution
to our health, purging us of all the unwholesome humours accumulated
during the winter months."

He then talks about a wild chicory salad and an excellent mixed salad,
which he describes as "the best and most wonderful of all."  He then
gives instructions as to how to properly make a salad, because he
complains that housewifes and foreign cooks don't get rid of the sand
and grit on the greens.  You wash your hands, then stirs the greens in a
bowl of water, lifting them out 3-4 times until all the sand has fallen
to the bottom.  Dry the greens with a linen cloth, put them in a bowl to
which salt has already been added, add oil and stir, then add vinegar. 
He has some pretty harsh comments about the salad making abilities of
other countries . . . 

"Never do as the Germans and other uncouth nations do - pile the badly
washed leaves, neither shaken nor dried, up in a mound like a pyramid,
then throw on a little salt, not too much oil and far too much vinegar,
without even stirring.  And all this done to produce a decorative
effect, where we Italians would much rather feast the palate than the
eye.

You English are even worse; after washing the salad heaven knows how,
you put the vinegar in first, and enough of it that for a footbath for
Morgante, and serve it up, unstirred, with neither oil nor salt, which
you are supposed to add at the table.  By this time some of the leaves
are so saturated with vinegar that they cannot take the oil while the
rest are quite naked and fit only for chicken food.

So, to make a good salad the proper way, you should put the oil in first
of all, stir it into the salad, the add the vinegar and stir again.  And
if you do not enjoy this, complain to me.

The secret of a good salad is plenty of salt, generous oil and a little
vinegar, hence the Sacred Law of Salads:  Insalata ben salata, poco
aceto e ben oliata (Salt the salad quite a lot, then generous oil put in
the pot, and vinegar, but just a jot).

And whosoever transgresses this benign commandment is condemned never to
enjoy a decent salad in their life, a fate which I fear lies in store
for most inhabitants of this Kingdom."


John le Burguillun