Cradock – A salad daze, in mid-summer in heat-drenched Cradock, is a condition in which you want nothing more than to sit in a wicker chair on the stoep, without moving a muscle, while staring into the yonder blue praying that oppressive giant cumulus will loom over the koppies at the edge of town, great claps of thunder will disturb your torpor, and rain will throw itself to the ground all around you.
A cooler day here, at this time of the year, has temperatures in the early 30s. One day the heat touched 43°C. Leaves go limp, even on plants that were watered only an hour earlier. Petals turn sad and brown. Cats lie spreadeagled in what passes for shade, bellies turned up to what they hope will be a breeze, any breeze.
Even the seedlings and larger plants at the local nursery wither away, despite the mulching and plant-feeding and masses of watering morning and evening. There is no conquering the intensity of this heat.
In the restaurant, we still include lamb and game dishes on our blackboard menus, because no matter how hard the Weather Gods may try, they still cannot dampen (if you’ll pardon the choice of word) the average customer’s need for Karoo food when visiting these towns. But there will always be salads too, even if it means making a salad with slivers of rare venison or lamb loin as the hero, in among the sensuous greens and reds of a cooling summer meal.
And the salad section of our menu is growing by the day. Cradock has several supermarkets, three of which have a good selection of vegetables and fruit, although the choice is a tad limited. You rarely find more than iceberg lettuce, although I have found cos and even butter lettuce now and then. There are always lovely perky red tomatoes, including my favourite roma variety, and cucumbers are abundant, as are red, yellow and green peppers.
One of the four supermarkets usually has fresh herbs, including coriander, parsley and, on occasion, thyme and oregano. But this choice cannot be relied upon, so when I walked into a fruit and vegetable shop while visiting Port Alfred last weekend I fell upon the vegetable fridge like a little boy walking into a sweet shop.
The large cooler box we had taken with us could hold barely half of what I bought, so I commandeered bags of ice and put them in carrier bags with the remainder of the produce to keep it fresh and perky on the three-hour drive home to Cradock.
Woolies in Gardens Centre has nothing on the freshness of these vegetables. Beautiful Bavarian lettuce, firm radishes the size of golf balls, lively basil, shiny brinjals, pak choi, dark green celery, and much more. I felt like I was in a vegetable shop in France or Belgium, where the fresh produce is exceptional. And this in Port Alfred.
But here’s the thing: menu planning and weather divination are random things over which we have no control. On Monday evening I planned all kinds of crisp salads for Tuesday’s menu. Three cheese salad, smoked chicken with all manner of crisp greenness and a coriander mayo dressing. Blanched baby fennel with caramelised pineapple, feta and toasted sesame seeds. Tuesday dawned and there was something strange in the air. Something very cool.
But no matter. This was going to be a salad day despite the weather.
The key to a salad, I think, is the dressing. There’s nothing wrong with a mere drizzle of olive oil and a quick grinding of salt and pepper. Stir a squeeze of lemon juice into the olive oil first and there’s an instant tang. Add a smidgen of mustard to it and you’re approaching a classic vinaigrette.
Here’s a handy tip if you can’t be bothered to make a dressing at all: buy slim bottles of avocado oil and make that your dressing, unadorned. They come in either garlic or lemon infusions.
I like to drizzle either of those avocado oils over a plated salad and then whizz together a mayonnaise dressing to finish it off. Pick the leaves off a small handful of coriander sprigs and stir it into a tablespoon or two of prepared mayo. A small grating of either orange or lemon zest adds plenty of perk to a mayo dressing, and a drizzle of olive oil, avocado oil or yoghurt – or one of the oils as well as yoghurt – can transform a simple dressing.
There’s only one golden rule for a salad: everything on that plate must be as fresh as morning dew.