STARTERS AND SALADS OVERVIEW!

               
Starter & Salads have become an integral part of our diet of late. With the changing lifestyle, our body needs less calories. Salads provide us roughage. In addition it stimulates our appetite. Salads and Starters are very simple to prepare. They may be prepared from leftovers available in the kitchen. Various Combinations and new presentations may be tried out. Ideally the portion size should be 75 gms. Salads can be served as a starter or as a side dish with the main  meal
        Salads is an excellent food during the summers!

Salads

Definition: Salad is defined as an horsdoeuvre or a side dish consisting of vegetables / meats / fish etc.which is appetising / eye appealing and tasteful.

Parts of Salads

Base- Lettuce / Cabbage

Body- Main part of salad such as vegetables, fish, meat etc.

Dressing- Liquid / semi-liquid that improves taste, moistens, makes salad colourful and give shine to the salad.

Garnish- To decorate

How to assemble a Salad

A salad has four parts. If any of the part is missing, then technically it cannot be termed as a complete salad. For assembling a salad, following are the steps-

• Place the base neatly on the dessert / half plate / salad bowl.
• Prepare the body, toss it lightly with the prepared dressing in a separate bowl.
• Pile the body over base. Garnish appropriately and serve chilled.

Note- Make sure all the ingredients that are put on the plate are edible. use of thermocol balls or marbles may look very attractive on the plate, but cannot be eaten.

Role of parts of Salads

Base: highlights the main part i.e. body of the salad.

Body: is the main part of the salad. The salad is based mainly on the body part of the salad.

Dressing: provides moistness, sometimes color and shine. It improves tastes and flavor of the salad. It also adds  the nutritive value.

Garnish: improves eye appeal of the salad.

                                                              Therefore all the parts of salads are equally important as each one of them has a specific role to perform. Generally we concentrate on the body of the salad only leaving out the other parts. But the role of other parts cannot be undermined.

Classification of Salads

Salads may be classified as-

• Simple Salads: are those salads in which the body part comprises of a single ingredient.eg, cucumber salad, tomato salad, beetroot salad etc.
• Compound Salads: are those salads in which the body part comprises of more than one ingredient. eg, cucumber and prawn salad, tomato and papaya salad, rice and beetroot salad etc.

In the past few days, I have received many queries as to how to prepare the salads since method was not given. I hope now the problem is answered.