Free Is There a Nutmeg in the House? by Elizabeth David, Jill Norman Page A

of onion, salt, sugar, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, parsley.
    Cut the stalk end from the pepper and discard all seeds and core. Rinse very thoroughly. Cut the pepper across into strips about 3.5 cm (1½ in) wide. Slice each of these strips into the thinnest possible little slivers, scarcely longer than a match. Put them into a bowl. Add a very little thinly sliced onion – no more than a teaspoonful. Season rather generously with salt, add a pinch of sugar, then 3 tablespoons of olive oil, one of wine vinegar, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a sprinkling of parsley. And, if possible, make the salad an hour or so in advance. Sweet peppers are all the better for being marinated in their dressing a little while before they are to be eaten.
    Greek white cheese or feta is nearly always eaten as a meze or first course and goes uncommonly well with raw vegetables such as fennel, the shredded peppers described above, radishes, and with new broad beans. The latter are simply put on the table, as they are, in the pod, on a big dish. Sea salt and good coarse bread should be part of this primitive summer feast.
    Wine & Food , June/July 1969

Leaf Salads
    Anyone who has visited Venice in the spring and in the early autumn will remember the ravishing and original salads offered in the Venetian restaurants, and the tremendous display of saladleaves and greenstuff to be seen on the stalls in the Rialto market.
    Many of these salad stuffs are quite unfamiliar to English eyes. There are three or four varieties of chicory leaves, none of these resembling what we know by that name. One of the northern Italian cicoria varieties is the rose-red plant known as cicoria rossa of Treviso, another is pink and white and frilly and comes from Castelfranco (both these regions are in the Veneto), yet another has green, elongated leaves and is known as cicoria spadona or sword-leaved chicory, a fourth is a lettuce-like plant and, just to help, all these chicories are also called radicchio ; this is not to be confused with radish or ravanelli , of which the leaves are also eaten in salad.
    Some of the salad plants, notably the beautiful rose-red chicory, has more decorative value than taste; the green ones are mild and slightly bitter; another, more interesting, salad leaf is rugeta or in Venice, rucola (nearly all Venetian food names whether fish, fungi or vegetable, differ from those of the rest of Italy), which has a peppery little leaf once familiar in England as rocket, in France as roquette , in Greece it is rocca , and in Germany senfkohl which means mustard herb; then there is corn salad or lamb’s lettuce (in Venetian, gallinelle , in French, mâche ), and little bright green serrated leaves which the market women call salatina .
    In the market, all these salad furnishings are offered for sale in separate boxes, each variety lightly piled up, shining and clean, ready for weighing out. (In Italy salads are bought by the kilo, not by the piece.) There will also be boxes of crisp fennel, violet-leaved artichokes and intensely green courgettes, their bright marigold-coloured flowers still intact.
    In the restaurants, the true Venetian restaurants that is, rather than the hotel dining-rooms where you may well have to put up with English-type lettuce and tomato dressed with over-refined olive oil, you will see big bowls of mixed leaves arranged like full-blown peonies for a table decoration, infinitely fresh and appetising. (It is an interesting point that while few Italians are capable of making a graceful flower arrangement, their foodstuffs are invariably displayed with most subtle artistry.) When you order a salad, a waiter will bring one of these bowls to your table so that you can make your choice. Your salad will be mixed for you; the dressing will be of fruity olive oil which has character (it is rare in northern Italy to find poor olive oil) and, in the Veneto, a very good pale rosé wine vinegar. In short you will get a civilisedsalad which