Green recipe
Sir: I hope, and believe, that no reader will pay attention to a word Digby Anderson writes (Food, 16 June) about green salad. Anyone who believes he can tell the difference between table and cooking salt in the taste of a dressing can believe anything; if you can tell the difference between red and white wine vinegar you are using too much vinegar. If you frenchify the dressing with garlic you won't taste anything else anyway. Even olive oil (especially 'good' olive oil) impairs the flavour of the chosen herb (only one in any one salad) which is the reason for the whole thing: a tasteless vegetable oil is better and cheaper. Your correspondent ignores the existence of herbs, but he seems to have difficulty in distinguishing between salads and lettuces.
Don't tell me the story of the Canadian mountie being dispatched to the far North with oil, vinegar, condiments and a bowl: I know it already. (For the benefit of any
reader who does not: he asked what they were for and was told, 'If you get lost, start putting them in the bowl and, however far away you are, someone will appear and say, "That's not the way to make a salad dressing".')
J. G. Links
2 Hyde Park Street, London W2
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