During the holidays, Venezuelan families, as many other families everywhere, get together to share quality time, and drink and eat typical beverages, dishes, and desserts. This time I was in charge of the salads for our dinner parties. I want to show you what I did to get everyone, picky eaters included, to enjoy the salads not only without noticing what they might dislike about raw onion in salads, but being able to appreciate it to their heart's content. All the picky eaters helped themselves to a second and some of them even a third portion of salad. When I asked them if they had felt the onion, they said "No," and when I asked them how come, they all said the same thing, that it must've been because the salad had a good dose of apple in it. But it wasn't just that: I add other ingredients as crunchy as the onion and, in addition, I make sure that the dressing has a hint of sweetness and that the onion absorbs it well. In this way the onion is camouflaged without the diners missing out on its flavor and texture. We simply make it blend in.

INGREDIENTS

Salad:

• 700 gr carrot
• 700 gr potato
• 700 gr apple (I used half granny Smith & half red)
• 200 gr red onion
• 200 gr fresh parsley
• 500 gr frozen peas

Dressing:

• 2 eggs + 1 yolk
• 150 ml oil (I used Mazeite corn oil)
• 20 ml white vinegar
• 20 ml mustard
• 20 ml honey
• 1 garlic bulb (I used a porcelain variety)
• salt to taste

THE PROCESS

I learned the hard way that just like in baking, the order in which you add the ingredients is also crucial when you prepare salads. Proper hygiene and the consistency of the cooked vegetables and dressings are also elements to keep in mind so that when someone tastes the salad, they will know who made it--but they will also be pleased.

As usual, I start by washing the ingredients well.

Then I peeled and chopped the carrots and potatoes into cubes of about one centimeter, so that they would cook quickly in boiling water. On other occasions, when gas shortages had not been a problem, I boiled the carrots and potatoes in their peels and then let them cool before peeling and dicing them; this way the salad, in my opinion, has more of an earthy flavor, which makes it more robust and enjoyable.

While the carrots and potatoes were cooking, I took care of the apples and onion: cut the former one in thin slices and the latter in fine brunoise. I cored the apples but left most of the skin on. For this, I had washed them very well with baking sod, to eliminate sulphites as much as possible.

While the cooked potato and carrot were cooling, I prepared the dressing. Basically, it was a homemade mayonnaise with garlic and honey and a little more mustard and vinegar than I usually add.

I added all the ingredients in the blender and it did its job.

I took it out of the glass before it started to set, which happens pretty quickly. I poured it over the chopped apples and onions; the onions soaked up the dressing very well. Also, the fact that the apple also absorbed the dressing ahead of time, would make it easier for one to be confused with the other. Hence, everyone felt that they had not noticed the onion because of the abundant amount of apple.

I mixed everything well.

By this time, the carrots were quite cold and the peas had thawed completely. So I added them to the salad bowl and poured and tossed them with the previous mixture.

After this added the potatoes and continued mixing...

...And finally, I added the freshly chopped parsley.

I had a good amount of parsley. In my family, we love parsley (and cilantro) and since we discovered its natural chelating properties, we love it even more. So I used the excess parsley to sprinkle over the salad; all in all, it was really flavorful and aromatic. All the picky eaters helped themselves to a second and even a third serving.

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

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