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Art of the salad

Benjamin Yong is creating salads for his deli. THERESA MANAVALAN savours the flavours as they develop

Roasted vegetables in a pesto dressing

IT was just plain sexy. The very idea of picking up corn on the cob, licking off the toasted coconut and biting off the kernels. No salad in the world gets raunchier than this. It’s meaty on the bite, chunky in the hand and gutsy on the tongue. Tropical flavours dancing around the grilled corn.

There’s a spike from the finely chopped red chili and shallots and a lyrical lift from fresh coriander leaves. And then, just Lea & Perrins sauce and olive oil to hold it all together. That’s a blast from the past, as in my childhood.

“We’re creating comfort food,” says Benjamin Yong, cook, restaurateur, CEO of the Delicious Group and all round bon vivant, as he aggressively tosses potato, whole heads of garlic and sprigs of rosemary for roasting.

Here I am, perched on a breakfast bar stool in the steel and granite kitchen in Yong’s swanky apartment at Dua Residence in Jalan Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur. He’s working on a makeover of the menu at D’lish, the deli that’s anxiously waiting to grow up into a real restaurant.

A team from the restaurant is frantically prepping ingredients for each experiment. They’re working on salads. From my perch, I can see that inventing food is the science, and knowing when you’ve got right is the art. That’s what the snappy exchanges are about in their frenetic pace.

With him are his mother Helen Read, founder of Ms Read fashion and herself a great cook, and Delicious Group R&D chief Abby Leong who takes copious notes. She goes over them with Yong again and again. They’ve got order in this chaos, counting individual basil leaves and garlic cloves.

Very soon, hearty and highly aromatic salads emerge in gigantic white platters. The colours are awesome, everything glistens with dressings, the scents are at once sweet, sharp and savoury.

Holland potatoes are boiled till tender. Then, with sprigs of rosemary, olive oil and garlic, bashed but unpeeled, they go into a hot oven until they’re browned. While hot, the potatoes are dressed with chopped gherkins, capers, thyme, parsley, sour cream, and… there, it’s coming, mayonnaise – another familiar flavour. “Roasting the potatoes takes them to a new level,” says Yong, “and garlic roasted in its skin is a completely different flavour dimension.” Altogether, so Provencale, yet so at home.

Wing beans, raw and crunchy, and halved cherry tomatoes are already a visual feast. Finely sliced sweet pink onions raise the killer factor with chopped fresh red chilli soused in white vinegar. And it’s a salad.

“Rest it in the fridge for about an hour for the flavours to develop,” says Yong. And they do. It’s altogether racy to devour something so simple in structure yet complex in flavour. An aide brings Yong a mighty roasting tray of blanched cauliflower florets. They look so virginal. With a wave of his hand, the florets are tossed with white vinegar, olive oil, thyme, capers, green olives, parsley and sultanas.

Into the oven. The smell of cauliflower in surrender wafts quickly into the whole apartment. The scent of caramelising sultanas is driving me nuts. Hot, browned at the edges, the Roasted Cauliflower Salad has a dessert-like divinity.

Then comes a glorious, almost-raw food moment. Tender French beans lightly blanched, or long beans if you like, and fresh mushrooms tossed in mustard, orange juice, cream, mayonnaise and cream cheese. Garnish with walnuts and segments of mandarin orange. Never ever tell your dietician about this salad. This is for the day you know you have to raise your fibre quotient but are prepared to throw everything else to the wind.

That was in May. Now, at D’lish, the new menu is well underway. The Roasted Potato Salad has become a fast mover as has the Bean And Mushroom Salad. The Corn On The Cob With Coconut Dressing is for people who like to eat with their hands. The lean, mean Wing Bean And Cherry Tomato Salad is clearly for those who favour texture and taste.

The Grilled Vegetables with Pesto is eminently memorable. The big red onion wedges in there is like Viagra in a salad. You might want to check out the Brown Rice – a combo of brown and white rice tossed with olives, raw garlic, dried cranberries and olive oil. The secret ingredient? Soya sauce.

These are salads for real people with a real appetite for hearty sides (RM5.80 each) or mainly vegetarian mains. They’re like a match made in heaven with the Moroccan roast chicken (RM18.80).

What gives them a lure-back quality is the feeling that this menu gives vegetables a higher than usual value in a restaurant. For people who like vegetables, not just vegetarians, they’re hearty, earthy and lend themselves to a whole meal.

D’lish Cafes are in Bangsar Village I and Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur.

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