HOW TO MAKE SIMPLE SALADS

Took a photo of my food and ate it afterwards. Photo of V-slicer courtesy of Amazon.com. Photo of citrus fruits courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Here are the easy ways to make simple salads:

1.) Salad in Intro photo

You can buy the vegetables that you can see in my intro photo, cook some, leave some raw, hard boil an egg and copy the sequence of putting the vegetables on the plate. Decorate with a piece of roasted pork or chicken breast and Voila! Ready to eat. It's mouth-watering.

2.) Cucumber salad

Fresh from your garden, wash two or three pieces of cucumbers and cut-off the bittter ends. Everyone has this V-Slicer, made in Germany which is available at Amazon.com, to cut the cucumbers in fine or thick slices. Watch out, V-Slicers are very sharp, you can hurt yourself. You can also use a sharp Solingen knife (available also at Amazon.com) to cut them slowly. Take some garlic, peel and squeeze them unto the cucumber slices which are in a bowl. If you don't possess a squeezer, use the mortar and pestle.and make a paste.

To make a dressing, mix a little bit of vinegar, a little bit of water, a pinch of sugar, a teaspoon of vegetable oil, salt and pepper. Make sure to taste it before pouring the dressing mix into the cucumber. Add more vinegar or salt if necessary. Decorate with parsley leaves before serving.

3.) Same thing with potato salad.

There are different kinds of potatoes, sticky potatoes and mealy potatoes to name a few. Boil some sticky potatoes until done. Meanwhile, peel
one onion, white or red onion, and grate it with the V-Slicer. It is advisable to use the red onion since it is sweeter and the contrast between yellowish color of the potatoes and the reddish color of the onion is already an eye-catcher. The V-Slicer has replaceable blades that you can choose how fine and how big the grated onion will be.

Pour a little bit of vinegar, a little bit of water, a pinch of sugar, a teaspoon of vegetable oil, salt and pepper into the cut onions on a serving bowl. Peel the boiled potatoes and cut them in thin slices. You can use the egg cutter if you want to have uniform sizes but the cuts are thicker. Mix them thoroughly and taste. If your dressing mix is not enough, add more and taste it. Grind pepper over it and mix it again. Decorate with a sprinkle of bell pepper dried powder. Put a parsley leaf on top.

4.) Get some iceberg salad or corn salad from your garden.

Clean and wash them carefully. There is a chance that some baby snails are caught in between the leaves. Cut one head of iceberg salad into pieces and put in a serving bowl. You can also add the corn salad to have a variety. The iceberg salad has a light-green crispy texture while the corn salad have tender green leaves on its stem. Mix some balsamic vinegar, but not too much, to the pumpkin seed oil. Both of them have dark greenish color. Add salt to taste.

Pour the dressing into the cut iceberg salad. Grind black pepper over it. Before serving add the corn salad to it to keep its texture.

5.) Clean one chinese cabbage, leaf by leaf.

Cut them into slices. Put them into a service bowl. Make a simple dressing out of water, sugar, apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Add a drop of vegetable oil and let it rest. One Tip, add mustard to your dressings to ennoble the taste of it. The taste could be the same on all salads but who cares? You wanted a simple salad, so you eat a simple salad.

In place of vinegar, you can use lemon juice or lime juice. If you have calamansi or calamondin (usually growing in tropical countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia), you probably need a kilo of those midget lime fruits to get enough juice. Calamansi trees are used as Chinese New Year decorations to imply bountiful, plentiful wish for the future.