9 tips to upgrade a boring salad

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: nine tips for a delicious salad.

Twitter is sometimes called the bathroom wall of the internet, so much anger and misery you encounter on that platform. One fierce debate about politics, religion, and media follows another barrage of insults. But a rant like the one from television producer Elan Gale is quite rare, as he completely goes off the deep end about... boring salads.

His argument reads as if he has been hammering on his keyboard like a child having a tantrum, without taking a breath, with a bright red face and stomping on the floor. A curse word here and there, capital letters in between, and furious advice. Just be quiet Elan, we agree with you. Boring salads are a crime against the culinary world and they MUST NOT be tolerated. We’ll summarize his arguments for you.

1. All ingredients of the salad must be seasoned. Salt and pepper over tomatoes, lemon juice over avocado. His advice: ‘Season everything as if you’re going to eat it separately.’

2. A boring salad comes from boring lettuce. Try something other than that eternal iceberg lettuce, arugula mix, lamb's lettuce, frisée, or romaine.

3. Don't be afraid of hot ingredients. Chili peppers! Radish! ‘Add some damn SPICE in there!’

4. Put herbs in the salad: coriander, parsley, basil, as long as it has flavor.

5. If you don't like feta it, then you just have to learn to eat it, says Elan, because cheese in a salad is delicious. And not that wimpy grated mozzarella.

6. Make a dressing: lemon juice, olive oil, vinegar, and something to bind it.

7. Horseradish is a must. Don't like it? Too bad for you. Or mustard, garlic, honey, Tabasco... Or Thai fish sauce (and of course, he also writes that in capital letters).

8. Look at what’s in your vegetable drawer and throw that in the salad.

9. Your salad is as dull as you make it. 2021 is the year of ‘exciting salads‘, says Elan. Period.