PERHAPS with Autumn creeping up on us it’s a little late to complain about the availability of a decent staple English/British salad meal.

Salad, when prepared in the past by mother or my wife, or even when eating out at a friend’s home, always consisted (leaving out ham, chicken etc) of lettuce and tomatoes, cheese grated or otherwise, beetroot, spring onions, cucumber, cold broad beans, pickled onions or chutney.

Go into a cafe or restaurant today and all you get veg wise for salad is a lump of lettuce, a few pieces of tomato garnished with a little bit of onion and strips or slices of peppers, which is a foreign import idea from the continent, not a basic English salad at all no matter how well it may be presented.

Why is it all chefs seem to be brainwashed with continental ways of serving a meal?

P WAREHAM, Haymoor Road, Poole