Chef’s Kiss Mango Avocado Salad

I don’t need to sell this mango avocado salad. It sells itself. Easy and amazing, it’s the perfect accompaniment to whatever meat or seafood you’ve thrown onto the BBQ or under the grill.

Which raises the question of salad as an accompaniment. Would an American eat this salad before the main course, the way I would have soup before mains? Or is my mango and avocado salad what you guys call a side dish?

When I searched on this, I was even more baffled to read some people eat their salad after the main course, apparently a leftover from Victorian times, when fresh greens with vinaigrette were considered a palate cleanser and digestion aid after meat and wine. For me, fresh greens with vinaigrette are an accompaniment to meat and wine, not a before or after.

Perhaps I’m a philistine and don’t frequent enough haute cuisine joints? Here, they suggest correct order of service is aperitifs, entree, fish, main, salad, cheese, dessert. If we go Michelin, and look at 17-Michelin-star chef Gordon Ramsay‘s menus, the general order seems to be:

• canapes
• entree/starters (which do include salads)
• main (mostly accompanied by vegetables, but at those prices, you’d kind of expect that)
• cheese
• palate cleanser (a sorbet, not a salad – so perhaps there’s a terminology hangover here?)
• dessert
• petit fours

even if not all courses are served. If you’re a desirous nosy-parker like me, here are the menus for 1890, Petrus, and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

Anyway, you say potayto, I say potahto, let’s not call the whole BBQ off 🙂 Instead, let’s kick back and enjoy some avocado salad with juicy, juicy mangoes, without the mosquito bites.

“This beef is so under-cooked, it’s starting to eat the f*n salad!’

-Gordon Ramsay