What’s in a (salad) name?

Three times in the last week here in Figueira da Foz I have ordered salada mista, each time in the same restaurant and each time I have received something slightly different. Now, you might be mistakenly led to believe that salada mista is a direct translation of the Spanish ensalada mixta. No doubt that is so linguistically but the two are quite different beasts.

The Spanish enslada mixta, even when you ask for a small one, is a creature that seemingly grows in the making: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, a bit of grated carrot, some sweetcorn, hard boiled eggs and the inevitable huge dollop of canned tuna fish. When it arrives at your table there is enough to serve three of you at least. The Portuguese salada mista is more like the spanish ensalada simple: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, grated carrot and that’s about it.

Anyway, on the first occasion of my ordering salada mista it was the evening. I do not know if that made a difference. I had ordered creme de marisco - an excellent seafood soup - and then the salad, which probed to,be a tastefully arranged small amount of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, grated carrot and red cabbage. Rather nouvelle cuisine but just the right amount. Small but perfectly formed. The restaurant has been refurbished since last year. Perhaps, I reflected, they are going all trendy foodwise!

The second occasion was a lunchtime. The chess people organise a system of dinner tickets for the restaurant; for a prepaid €9.50 chess players can choose from a set menu do dia: soup, something fishy or meaty with veg or rice, a drink, dessert and coffee. We only had one ticket so Phil went for the menu do dia and I opted again for creme de marisco and salada mista. This time the salada was a huge plateful, Spanish ensalada mixta proportions. and included sweetcorn - no eggs or tuna fish though. We were lunching with a friend and I shared my salad with him and with Phil. 

Yesterday I decided that, given the size of the lunchtime salada earlier in the week, I would not have soup. The salada would suffice. So about half the amount arrived, this time served in a bowl. Without sweetcorn and with fewer tomatoes. Decanted onto my plate it was plenty.

A nice salad and a glass of crisp white wine is a fine lunch. The inconsistency amused me though.

My salad and wine selection works out cheaper than the dinner ticket and I include a dessert. We usually opt for salada de fruta, a reliably good fresh fruit salad, as the other options in the dinner ticket menu do not appeal to us. However, yesterday, as I was not tied to the menu do dia choices, I selected pannacotta com frutos vermelhos - red fruit pannacotta. Very good it was too!

Finishing off a meal with coffee, as a rule we ask for a cafe pingado, the equivalent of a café cortado. The waiters accept this term but on the bill it always appears as a garoto. Odd! As sometimes happens in Spain, the cafe pingado / café cortado in that restaurant can be a little bitter. Requests for extra milk make little difference. In Spain we might order a small café con leche instead. Here our experience has been that asking for a meia de leite, a white coffee, results in a breakfast-sized serving. Not what you need at the end of lunch. Our Portuguese is limited but we thought we had indicated to the waiter that we would like two SMALL meias de leite. He seemed to understand but clearly did not, or perhaps he forgot and just went on automatic end-of-lunch pilot; two pingados arrived as usual at our table!

Such are the vagaries of eating out!

And, before Hallowe’en is too far in the past, I came across a discussion of how the word should be spelt: Halloween or Hallowe’en. People have told me in the past that I am too picky when I insist on the apostrophe. The discussion site vindicated me: Hallowe’en is the Eve of All Saints, hallow being an old word for holy. I knew that already.

What I did not know was that trick or treating may have originated back in sixteenth century England as “souling”, when people went from house to house offering to pray for the souls of the dead. Not an Americanism at all.

And then there is this alternative version:

The name Hallowe’en is a corruption of the words Haribos evening, named after the better-than-nothing cheap sweets which are traditionally given out on October 31st.