Eat Your Salad With a Spoon - The New York Times

Sohla El-Waylly’s quinoa and broccoli spoon salad, and more spoonable recipes.

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Setting the table can be tricky at my house. My daughter eats her salad with her fingers. Myself, I use chopsticks some of the time. Other people, like my husband, seem to like a regular old fork. But Sohla El-Waylly prefers a spoon.

At least, that’s her recommendation for quinoa and broccoli spoon salad (above). Filled with chopped raw broccoli, sweet-tart dried cranberries, crunchy pecans and Cheddar cheese amid the fluffy grains of quinoa, Sohla’s nubby salad all but defies a fork. Spooning it is the easiest, most flavor-forward approach, and I’m completely here for it.

There are many other salads that might be better spooned rather than forked, including all manner of cucumber-tomato salads with their tangy, drippy juices. That way you could savor Samin Nosrat’s salad-e Shirazi or David Tanis’s feta sprinkled chopped salad without spilling a drop of savory dressing.

Tabbouleh salads (Kay Chun has a delightful one with chickpeas), rice salads (Emily Nunn’s herby rice salad with peas and prosciutto) and bean salads (perhaps Margaux Laskey’s zesty cowboy caviar) are also very spoon-friendly.

And while the spoons are out, let’s make soup! Yasmin Kahn’s roasted cauliflower soup is spiced with turmeric and cumin, and cleverly topped with crispy cauliflower leaves roasted with the florets, along with a handful of almonds. It would be a fine meatless meal on a cool, wintry evening. A bit heartier is Ali Slagle’s soupy take on spaghetti and meatballs made with ground chicken and plenty of Parmesan. Or try a classic chicken soup: Julia Moskin’s golden, brothy recipe can be filled with chunks of carrot and noodles, rice or matzo balls. It is sure to cure whatever ails you.

Some people like to eat chili with a spoon, and that includes chili-based tamale pies with their tender cornbread topping. My latest column has a meatless take on this classic, zipped up with charred poblanos and jalapeños. And a combination of spoon-plus-chopsticks will be your best option for gathering every last morsel of a bowl of heady, herb-topped bún kèn, Diep Tran’s recipe for Vietnamese coconut fish with noodles.

Then, for dessert, you can use the back of your spoon to crack the caramelized, candy-like top of a vanilla crème brûlée, then scoop out the custard. And for the ultimate in vegan spoonable sweets, try Jocelyn Ramirez’s almond-milk-based arroz con leche, which is perfumed with star anise and cinnamon and dappled with plump, sweet raisins.

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The spoon is arguably the most protean eating implement on the planet, and it has been reinvented for every predilection, whether you’re scooping marrow, dosing sugar or, somewhat controversially, cooking eggs over an open fire. As Bee Wilson recounts in her wonderful history, “Consider the Fork,” spoons’ “construction and their use has often reflected deep passions and fiercely held prejudices,” like when the spartan Cromwellian spoon was pushed aside by the regal Restoration trifid. The spoon even has a history of being hybridized, like the legendary runcible spoon, although such experiments can make setting the table even trickier. A spoon is a spoon, and perhaps that is enough.

See you on Wednesday.

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