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

is a treat to the eye as well as a stimulus to the palate and a refreshment to the spirit.
    In the early summer of 1969 the salads of Venice made such an impact on one of my sisters – it was her first visit to Venice – that we went to the market and bought seeds of all the local salad plants we could find.
    Some of these plants, notably the rocket (its Latin name is Eruca sativa ; it used to be common in English gardens) did remarkably well that summer in my sister’s little cottage garden, near Petersfield; in another garden in the Isle of Wight it grew like a weed, far into the autumn. Sorrel and corn salad, single-leaved parsley, and pink chicory were all forthcoming from these gardens, and so it was that during the warm summer and the long miraculous autumn of that year we all feasted on fresh and spring-like salads almost every day of our lives. English radishes were uncommonly crisp and good, English broad beans scented the greengrocers’ shops like a beanfield, mange-tout peas were so delicate and sweet that to eat them raw was like tasting some extraordinary new kind of sorbet – and there were those heartening salads, not it is true at all like Venetian salads but delicious in their own way, and original. (In Venice, we could not have eaten them all summer through. It is too hot. The leafy little salads vanish by the end of May, to reappear only in the autumn.)
    GARDEN SALAD
    A cos or Webb’s lettuce, sorrel leaves, rocket, corn salad, single-leaf parsley (also called, variously, French, Italian, or Greek parsley), chives or green onion tops, and any fresh green salad herbs you may fancy, or have growing in your garden.
    With stainless steel kitchen scissors cut the washed and dried lettuce leaves into strips or ribbons. Also cut up a few young sorrel leaves (if they are very small, leave them whole). Mix in a shallow bowl or large soup plate with a handful of corn salad leaves, chives, and French parsley cut with scissors.
    Mix the salad at the table with a fruity olive oil and mild wine vinegar dressing to which you have added a very small pinch of sugar as well as salt. With the peppery flavour of the rocket you will not need to add extra pepper.
    Proportions of the different salad greens are dictated by individual taste and by what chances to be available. For example,instead of rocket, you could use a few nasturtium leaves which also have a rather peppery tang. Very small tender beetroots, freshly boiled, skinned, sliced and seasoned with dressing while still tepid, make a delicious addition to this salad. Add them to the greenery only at the last minute .
    Fresh crisp radishes, sliced into little rounds, make another nice addition.
    A salad such as this one, based on seasonal leaves and green herbs, should be mixed in a spontaneous easy manner. If it is made into a great production overloaded with urban furbelows such as avocado slices, orange segments, slices of sweet pepper and so on, the rural character is sacrificed.
    Unpublished, 1969
    A fine example of how much our food has changed in thirty years – at least in part because of Elizabeth David’s evocative writing. Now, most of the ingredients she describes are readily available and although these days some salad greens are bland and tasteless, the chicories, rocket and cresses retain their bite, corn salad its gentler flavour. What still remains hard to buy is the mixed small leaves sold as salatina in Italy, mesclun in France.
    JN

Crudités
    This year our English spring was cold, wild and windblown. The garden salad greens and herbs were late coming on the market. So it was well into May before I saw home-grown romaine lettuces at my local greengrocery store. On the same day there were the first new broad beans, imported from southern France, and in another shop a box of mini-size fennel offered at half the price of the big ones and worth twice as much. (Only horses could get their teeth into those great over-swollen things, large as coconuts