Salad
Urap (Blanched Vegetables in Spiced Grated Coconut)
A Javanese vegetable salad: blanched or steamed vegetables tossed through seasoned grated coconut. Every other Indonesian dish here presses the coconut for its milk and then spends the recipe managing the fat that comes out of it. Urap presses nothing. The grated flesh is mixed raw with a pounded paste of chilli, garlic, galangal and lime leaf, steamed briefly, and turned through the vegetables as a coating rather than a liquid.
Kısır (Bulgur Salad Worked with Pepper Paste)
A Turkish salad and meze: fine bulgur worked by hand with tomato and pepper paste and olive oil until it takes the colour, then mixed with parsley, spring onion, cucumber and pomegranate molasses and served at room temperature. Bulgur is wheat that has already been boiled, dried and cracked, so it is rehydrated rather than cooked — and here what it drinks is the paste, not water.
Taramosalata (Cured Roe Whipped with Oil and Bread)
A Greek meze: salt-cured fish roe beaten with soaked bread, olive oil and lemon into a pale emulsion. It is a mayonnaise built in the opposite order — the emulsifier has already been cured for weeks, so the seasoning arrives before the cook does and the adjustment is made by diluting rather than by salting. Traditionally eaten on Clean Monday, the first day of the Orthodox Lent.
Nam Khao (Crispy Rice Salad with Fermented Pork)
The Lao salad in which cooked rice is mixed with curry paste and egg, packed into balls, deep fried, and then broken up by hand into fermented pork and herbs. An arancino is fried so that its shell will hold the inside in; this is fried in order to be broken. A ball has the least surface for its volume and frying only ever reaches the surface, so a whole one is a single thin crust around plain rice. Crushing it turns that one crust into dozens of crisp shards and opens all of the soft rice inside to the dressing.
Pikliz (Pickled Cabbage and Scotch Bonnet Relish)
The Haitian pickle of cabbage and carrot held in vinegar with scotch bonnet chillies. This site’s chilli guide says capsaicin dissolves in fat and not in water, which is why drinking water does nothing for a burning mouth. Pikliz uses that fact as a clock. In a vinegar with almost no fat in it the capsaicin moves across very slowly, so a jar made yesterday is mild and a month-old jar is fierce — and the liquid itself becomes the hot sauce you spoon over rice.
Lahpet Thoke (Fermented Tea Leaf Salad)
Myanmar's national dish, and the only one on this site in which the leaves of the tea plant are eaten rather than infused. Raw tea leaf is far too astringent to eat: it is loaded with tannin. This site already has two answers to tannin — acorn jelly leaches it out into water and throws the water away, dried persimmon links it into molecules too large to grip. Lahpet is the third. Steamed leaves are pressed under a heavy weight and no brine is poured in, so the only liquid is what the leaves themselves give up, and after months the astringency is gone and sourness and savour are left in its place. Everything else in the bowl is crunchy, and that is structure, not taste.
Yam Wun Sen (Cold Glass Noodle Salad)
The Thai salad of boiled and cooled glass noodles dressed in lime and fish sauce. No cold noodle dish anywhere uses wheat, and the reason is in the starch. The daifuku page on this site explains amylose as the molecule that recrystallises on cooling and makes mochi go hard; mung bean starch is over thirty per cent amylose, roughly double rice. The property that ruins a rice cake is the entire point of this one: the strand firms up as it cools instead of going soft.
Olivier Salad (Diced Potato, Egg and Pickle Bound with Mayonnaise)
Russia’s salad, and compulsory on a New Year table: potato, egg, pickled cucumber, peas and ham all cut to the same small dice and bound with mayonnaise. Temperature is the whole thing. Mayonnaise is a finished emulsion, and warm food breaks it from the outside — the fat softens and coalesces while steam condenses into it and thins it. So everything goes in completely cold and dry, which is the exact opposite of the rule for a German potato salad.
Pai Huang Gua (Smashed Cucumber Salad)
A Chinese cold dish in which the cucumber is smashed rather than sliced — the name means "beaten cucumber". A fracture runs along the cell walls and leaves a torn, irregular face, unlike the flat plane a knife makes, so there is far more surface and the inside is open. That is why the dressing goes in instead of sliding off. The garlic is the same story: allicin, the sharp smell of raw garlic, is not sitting inside an intact clove — it is manufactured the moment the cells break.
Salade niçoise (Composed Tuna and Egg Salad)
A salad from Nice: tuna, anchovy, boiled egg, tomato and olives laid out in separate groups on the plate. What matters here is not the ingredients but that it is not mixed. Tossed together, the tuna and egg break down into a grey paste and the tomatoes weep. Dressing each element and putting it in its own place is what a composed salad means, and this is the standard example.
Carottes Râpées (Grated Carrot Salad)
The default French salad: carrot cut fine and dressed in a mustard vinaigrette. Four ingredients look like nothing to get wrong, but an unemulsified dressing splits, the oil and vinegar slide off the carrot, and all of it pools in the bottom of the bowl. And unlike almost any other salad, this one is better half an hour after it is made than straight away.
Laap (Minced Meat Salad with Toasted Rice)
Laos's national dish: minced meat cooked without liquid, dressed with lime, fish sauce and herbs, and bound with toasted ground sticky rice. Without the toasted rice — khao khua — it is not laap, and the dressing and herbs go in only after the pan is off the heat.
Shopska Salad (Tomato Salad with Grated Cheese)
Bulgaria's signature salad: roasted red pepper, tomato and cucumber dressed with sunflower oil and vinegar, then buried under grated white cheese until the vegetables disappear. Roasting the peppers and piling the cheese on top rather than mixing it in are what make it shopska.
Fattoush
A Levantine salad of crisp toasted pita and crunchy vegetables tossed in a tangy sumac dressing. Loaded with cucumber, tomato, radish, and herbs, it is bright and fresh — a Mediterranean healthy classic that puts leftover bread to good use.
Som Tam (Green Papaya Salad)
Thailand's iconic salad: shredded green papaya pounded in a mortar with lime, fish sauce, palm sugar, and chili. Sour, spicy, salty, and sweet all at once, with crunchy papaya and toasty peanuts — and no cooking required.
Gado-Gado (Salad with Peanut Sauce)
Blanched vegetables, potato, boiled egg, and tofu on one plate under a generous pour of sweet-savory-spicy peanut sauce — Indonesia's beloved salad. Filling without a stove, with kecap-manis peanut sauce tying every element together.
Coleslaw
An American salad of finely shredded cabbage and carrot in a creamy mayo-vinegar dressing. A crisp, no-cook 5-minute side that's a must with burgers, BBQ, and fried chicken.
Tabbouleh (Parsley Salad)
A Lebanese herb salad of chopped parsley with bulgur, tomato, and mint, dressed in lemon and olive oil. A bright, healthy no-cook dish that pairs perfectly with mezze like hummus and falafel.
Caprese (Insalata Caprese)
An Italian salad from the island of Capri — slices of tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil drizzled with just olive oil and salt. Its red, white, and green echo the Italian flag. With good ingredients it's a few cuts away from done — the easiest of starters.
Greek Salad (Horiatiki)
The traditional Greek salad (horiatiki) — ripe tomato, cucumber, red onion, and olives topped with a slab of feta, drizzled with olive oil and plenty of oregano. No lettuce; simple ingredients, Mediterranean at its best.
Caesar Salad
Crisp romaine tossed in a rich anchovy-garlic-Parmigiano dressing and piled with crunchy croutons and cheese. A world-loved classic, born in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924.