Title: Wild Greens and Flowers Salad -2
Categories: Amerind Vegetable Salad
Yield: 1 Servings

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What I find rather interesting is that there is really no early record of salads in European cuisine -- although peasants and country people certainly ate various kinds of early wild plants. The idea of salad seems to have been brought back to France from America in the 18th century or so. (I'm not sure English ever really have caught on about salads.) Escoffier, in the famous Guide Culinaire has braised lettuces, pureed, stuffed leaves, creamed, soufled -- but not raw!

Cucumbers are parboiled, then fussed with in many ways. Cauliflower, one of the nicest (raw) salad vegetables is cooked. He does talk of cooking new peas quickly (unlike the English who cook boiled vegetables to death), but any raw vegetable, root or leafy, is carved up for a granish, or laid around as green frills, considered only for show, not edible.

So, although I've never seen this discussed in European cookbooks or food discussions, I think the very idea of salads came from Native people. AFter all, what did Europeans do with the tomato? for 100 years they considered it ornamental but a deadly poison!

Traditionally, the main huge salad eating-feasts were in early spring, when a great many wild plants -- tough and inedible even if cooked later -- come up as tender new shoots and leaves. What we now can do, because of refrigeration and shipping, is eat salads all year long -- and we should! All vegetables lose some of their nutrient value in any kind of cooking. Young people should be aware that delicious and healthful salads are part of our Native food traditions, so eat plenty of it.

Paula Giese

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