"Vegetarians, and their hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn."
I laughed so hard I snorted (ok, it happens all the time, but only when I find something seriously funny). I high air-fived Anthony Bourdain and, with my free hand, gave myself a hearty pat on the back. Then I probably went out and, to make myself feel extra special good, ate a burger with bacon and duck-fat fries. Or something, and the whole time I'm thinking, "you and me, Bourdain, we're on the saaaame page, baby."
I'm such a hypocrite.
Because for about 15 years there, I was a happy vegetarian and then, for an entire year, I ate no animal products at all. I was a (**shudder**) vegan. I ordered my pizza without cheese and had my first, but not last, encounter with Quorn (**shuddershuddershuddershudder**). I never looked down on my meat-eating peers, but I wasn't one of them. I wasn't a vegetarian for political or health reasons, either. I thought it was (and now I hang my head in utter shame)...cool. Different. Vegetarianism made me a badass, which seems counterintuitive in retrospect, but I guess I was a weird kid.
Around the middle of college I started eating meat again. If I recall correctly I was under some stress of a personal nature, and my friends showed up to my apartment and took me to get a burger. They said it would make me feel better. And, lo and behold, they were right. They were good friends. And 15+ years of veggies-only went sailing away as I tucked into my charred, griddled meat-on-bun at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis, which I still think has the best burgers in the entire universe. I was saved.
I'm now a Carnivore, and proud of it. But here's the thing, and this is why I'm very lucky: I still love vegetables. I adore them. I think that I like them more than I like big hunks of meat, and while I crave a burger every few weeks, I crave fennel always. And right now, when my kitchen is several thousand degrees above fit for human habitation, I want salad. I hunger for it. I desire it, I fall victim to it. Salad lust overtakes me and sends me on almost-daily trips to the grocery stores and farmers' markets to buy fresh veggies that I'll devour the same night, crunching away and filling my cheeks like Bugs Bunny on a carrot binge.
I'm actually not exaggerating.
So...why? Why now, and why so intense? I don't care about "swimsuit season" whatever in the hell that is -- bathing suits elude and terrify me and always have. I'm also not trying to improve my health -- the only thing scarier than a bikini is a diet, and besides, you see how I cook. No, I think that it has to do with balance, that perfect storm of crunch, sweet, salty, tart, that every salad should strive to be. The spray of water as knife cuts through cold lettuce, the gentle give and snap of a radish sliced wafer-thin. The way a simple vinaigrette, applied sparingly, spruces up the produce. The dynamic, bracing way a vegetable perks up when salt is applied...I live for this stuff. Salad isn't just for accompanying a piece of meat. If it's good, salad can be the thing itself.
It was last night, and I chose to make a really simple salad that I think came out of an informal cooking lesson from my Uncle Marc's mother Georgette. She owned a restaurant in New Jersey and is a gorgeous cook, and as soon as she heard that I was interested in food she pulled me into the kitchen to make this:
It's a combination of chopped red onions, romaine lettuce, loads of fresh mint, apple cider vinegar, olive oil and salt, all tossed together. In whatever quantities suit you (some like more onions, some like less mint or, most likely, the other way around). She added avocado but my sorely lacking supermarket was out, so I omitted and instead chose caramelized onions and a bit of diced mozzarella. The vinegar softens the onions if you mix them before adding the other ingredients, especially if you sprinkle in some salt and give them a few minutes to mellow. Then the mint, just tear up haphazardly, and use more than you think you should. It becomes a beautiful note of "what is that?" Let the salad sit for a minute or two after you combine it all, and serve it on its own with some bread and nothing else, because this beauty demands attention.
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