Emer McLysaght: Roll up the ham, it’s Irish summer salad season

Every so often I’m almost duped into buying a contraption that promises to create the perfect conditions between my microwave and an egg. Poached is usually the method of choice for these snake oil merchants, promising that sealing the egg in a plastic hockey puck will result in the same outcome as a perfectly timed pan of scalding water. Anyone who’s ever purchased the poached egg hockey puck knows that the only outcome is a hockey-puck shaped egg that is either completely raw or like a bullet, or somehow both. And yet, the lure of the microwaveable egg endures.

Most recently though, it was a TikTok demonstration of a four-egg-hard-boiler that caught me in its tractor beam. It claims not only to perfectly cook the eggs to a jammy hardness, but also to peel said eggs for you too. Only that I’ve placed a ban on myself buying rubbish off the internet after two years of deranged pandemic purchases, it would have been straight into my basket, for we have officially entered not only summer but a very distinct phase in Ireland’s culinary calendar: the Irish summer salad plate season.

Now, had I indulged in the four-egg-hard-boiler I might have shot myself in the foot, because everybody knows that the egg in an Irish summer salad must be cooked until the yolk resembles compacted chalk dust, surrounded by a treacherous-smelling green ring. Jammy eggs are basically raw in the Irish summer salad canon. The hard, hard-boiled eggs can be cut in half, but preferably they would be placed in an egg guillotine and sliced. An egg guillotine can no doubt be purchased in the same establishment as the hockey puck and the boiler-cum-peeler.

The egg must be accompanied by ham. Not freshly boiled or baked ham, but rather ham from a packet that can be rolled into glamorous little cigarillos. The rolling of the ham is not only aesthetically pleasing, setting us apart from the apes, but also makes more room on the real estate of the plate. Butterhead lettuce is next, ideally washed and then dried with one single piece of kitchen roll. I don’t know about you, but I was raised to understand that kitchen roll plays a largely decorative role and must only be used when absolutely necessary, and then with an extremely light hand.

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The butterhead lettuce can act like a bowl within a plate; a useful receptacle for potato salad or coleslaw or both. Both can be forgone for a generous splash of salad cream, but all three may also be present. It’s very much a “more is more” scenario. Tomatoes halved, then quartered and preferably cut into eighths is next, providing there is a human equivalent to a salt lick available to dip them into. Scallions cut on the diagonal for flair, beetroot in corrugated slivers, and maybe even a tablespoon of tinned sweetcorn, finish off an Irish salad to perfection. Cheese is optional, but if it is present it might be offered on a separate plate so that diners can help themselves. Nobody knows where the segregation of the cheese originated, but it may be that when purchasing cheese for a summer salad one might opt for the Good Cheddar, and its higher value might then dictate that it be fanned out on its own plate.

Then, when the salad is constructed, comes the traditional question of “will we have it outside?”, for the Irish summer salad is a dish for days when the temperature spikes between 19 and 24 degrees (any hotter and sure you couldn’t be sitting outside) and it is deemed too hot to cook. A patio umbrella is erected, a basket of brown soda/batch/fresh white bread is placed alongside the fan of cheese, and the meal can begin.

The Irish salad is such an enduring tradition that it’s surprising it hasn’t been upgraded from a beloved at-home dining experience to a trend-driven restaurant opportunity. It does bear resemblance to one of the more recent food trends — the charcuterie board. These are the party food du jour, and have evolved from the typical meat and cheese displays to include every option under the sun. I saw a parent on Instagram recently putting together a “charcuterie” of peanut butter on crackers, jam sandwiches and mandarin wedges for an after-school snack, and that’s how you know the shark is about to be jumped. Surely it’s only a matter of time before some whiz is charging 15 quid a head for an “Irish summer salad gastroboard”. If it could happen for spice bags, doughnuts, cronuts, burritos and cheese toasties, maybe it could happen for the humble plate o’hang.

I must admit that I’m something of a philistine when it comes to the Irish salad. Friends would describe me as “weird about condiments” and I have an aversion to wet, mayonnaisey substances. Therefore, I prefer a dry salad — ham, egg, lettuce, spring onion, beetroot — hell I might even grate up some carrot and eat the whole damn lot outside. The Irish summer salad is more than just a plate of food, it’s a state of mind.