A salad by any other name
“I had a ploughman’s lunch the other day; he wasn’t very pleased about it” Tommy Cooper
A Ploughman’s Lunch is an icon of English cuisine. You could randomly pick any English pub to have lunch in, and chances are you will find a Ploughman’s Lunch on the menu. On a warm summer afternoon a Ploughman’s Lunch and a cold beer is the stuff of dreams.
Now, you may be thinking ploughmen have been around for a long long time, they have, and I expect they took a cold lunch with them when they went into the fields. But the Ploughman’s Lunch as we know it today was invented in the 1960’s by marketing men who wanted to promote cheese. It has to be said, they did a great job, the Ploughman’s Lunch was and still is a popular choice for lunch, and it definitely fits the description of a Killer Salad.
The Ploughman’s Lunch may vary from pub to pub, but there are four ingredients that are required and if they are not present then it’s not a Ploughman’s. These four ingredients are cheese, crusty bread, butter and pickles, they are non negotiable.
Other ingredients are usually added alongside the main four, the most common being a selection of salad leaves. Others include pate, sliced hard boiled egg and pork pie. There are no hard and fast rules about what you can add, just don’t remove the cheese, crusty bread, butter and pickles.
The cheese should be cheddar, a large wedge of cheddar. Sometimes you will find Stilton or Brie, or maybe a selection of all three but cheddar is the best in my humble opinion.
The crusty bread can be white or brown, but must be crusty. A slice of regular supermarket bread will not suffice, it should be a good quality thick chunk of crusty bread.
The butter should be served in a small dish on the side of the plate, and it should be butter. Margarine is not the same as butter and will not do.
The pickles can be either traditional pickled onions or a couple of spoonfuls of brown Branston sweet pickle, this is entirely your choice. I prefer the pickled onions but the sweet pickle is nice too.
Additional salad leaves should be fresh and crisp, I like to use a Cos lettuce or Romaine. I sometimes also add sliced tomato and cucumber, and have even been known to add some sliced ham.
You can see examples of Ploughman’s Lunches here
