Extreme Cuisine: Time to terminate the dreary Irish salad. Haydn Shaughnessy makes the case for a much more diverse (and beneficial) range of salad ingredients
Food preparation has a direct effect on mood. Stir-fry is for people who crave agitation, stews for comfort-seekers, sauté for those who are dry. Salads release the scientist in us. They are experiments.
What goes into the Irish salad bowl is one of the most important questions the new Minister for Health has yet to ask.
Meat, eaten in excess, probably causes too much acidity in the body. Carbohydrates might add pounds to the flesh. Fish seems to have a beneficial effect on brain development. But there is absolutely no doubt that green leaf vegetables are extremely healthy and guard against serious illness.
Green leafy vegetables and herbs are so important that spread manufacturers extract sterols from plants and then add them to fake butter so we can spread them on our morning toast. How insane can we get?
There should be a campaign to persuade people of the diversity and benefits of a much wider range of salad ingredients.
The list, and recipe, below, is rough eating. Those new to raw foods should go carefully. Many greens dehydrate the body, and all force the stomach and bowels to work a bit harder. Build up the quantity while listening out for how your body is reacting. Drink plenty of water.
Herbs: The quantity of herbs to use in salads is not far short of the quantity of leaves. Who cares if many are out of season, herbs are the richest source of vitamins, especially vitamin C. Parsley, coriander, mint, tarragon, basil and fennel leaves. Put them in whole. Eating a salad with whole herbs is a bit like surfing. You keep hitting a new wave of taste.
Sour and bitter: Sour for the taste and the beneficial bacteria. Bitter because it alkalinises. Cabbage, grated so finely that the juices run. Sauerkraut. We never eat a salad at home without sauerkraut. The sourness makes the bowl desirable. De Rits do a mildly salted variety. Tamarind. Endive. Brine-based pickles. Pickled beetroot. Celery, diced into minuscule pieces. Cucumber. Slice the cucumber lengthways so they are a very evident component of a meal. Lemon preserved in salt allows you to use the whole of the rind. It sizzles with the slight hint of ferment.
Leaves: chlorophyll rich. Rocket, baby leaf spinach, sorrel, watercress, but never lettuce. Lettuce is limp.
Parasite killers: Radish. Just five or six, including the leaves, if you grow your own. Diced onion and shallots. All the herbs, but especially parsley and garlic.
Antacids: Sour and bitter salads are generally alkaline forming but I often add whole new potatoes, skin on, sautéed in butter, to increase the effect.
Salad fats: Walnuts if they are fresh but otherwise walnuts go rancid more quickly than other nuts and you do not want to eat rancid oils. Nuts and seeds generally aid digestion, and support the lungs, which is a whacky reason for eating them. Ground flax seeds (eaten within 15 minutes of grinding and usually with cottage cheese to speed the uptake of the Omegas). Sunflower seeds - toasted, if I remember in time. Toasting reduces rancidity. Sesame seeds. Pumpkin seeds. Avocado. A high quality olive oil. Black olives. Scrapings of hard cheese (Desmond, Parmesan). Sour cheeses, like feta. Cottage cheese.
Sprouts: for the digestive enzymes. Alfalfa sprouts, about a handful goes into every meal. Occasionally, mung bean or aduki bean sprouts. Wheat germ sprouts.
Carbs: If necessary. Puffed rice, for example. My local health food shop sells a brand that coats its puffed rice in honey. Beans. Chickpeas, kidney beans or black-eyed beans, occasionally for the same reason.
Antioxidants: All the herbs have an antioxidant effect. Garlic. Cut into slivers rather than diced (it is supposed to minimise the odour). Spring onion, occasionally, finely diced. Turmeric in small amounts. Sea salad. Clearspring produce a good pack of mixed seaweeds. Use for background flavour. Fruit. Cherries, stoned, when they are available. Dried unsulphured apricots, diced, prunes soaked overnight in freshly squeezed orange juice.
Sodium: A small amount of fine salt crystals. Never low sodium salt and never fine running salt.
• Journalist, film-maker and part-time cook, Haydn Shaughnessy's latest epic is Extreme Cuisine: The Tao of Salad, a pot pourri of health and food in search of a tasty, but meaningful, narrative.