I love me some salad lyonnaise. The first time I had it was at Les Halles in NYC. For anyone out there who “doesn’t like salad”, this is the one for you. The bacon makes it manly, if you’re worried about that kind of thing, and how can you say no to lettuce that tastes like bacon and eggs? I’m going to show three different preparations of this wonderful marriage of crunchy greens and the most important meal of the day.
Version 1: The Classic.
The most common approach to salad Lyonnaise is a salad of Belgium endive dressed with bacon bits and a dressing made from red wine vinegar and the bacon drippings. The thing is, I’m not a fan of this preparation. I don’t love endive enough to have it as the only flavor (plus, who wants to eat an all-white salad?). Same goes for red wine vinegar. I’m in the minority here and I know it but home cooking is all about what you love so it’s OK, I promise.
Version 2: The Modern.
Swap out red wine vinegar for the infinitely superior sherry vinegar, let frisee wail on lead guitar while endive is on the drums and we’ve got a salad I can love. Serve it to a girl while you watch The Sweetest Thing and she’ll see that you’re sophisticated and sensitive, but true to your roots and manly. If you make out, her lips will taste of bacon - that’s the dream dudes.
Salad:
1 large head Frisee lettuce, rinsed and torn
1 Belgian endive, rinsed and torn (Costlier than you’d think. They’re grown underground!)
2 small or 1 large shallot, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons Sherry Vinegar (the best you can get. Aged? You’re golden.)
4-6 tablespoons reserved bacon drippings (From the lardons. Make sure it stays warm.)
4 slices of the thickest cut bacon you can find (Get slab bacon if you can and slice your own 1/4″ pieces.)
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon white vinegar (for the eggs)
Salt and fresh ground pepper
Croutons: (these are great but the salad is fine without them too)
1 loaf ciabatta, baguette, or other crusty bread (Day or two old is fine.)
8 oz Gorgonzola Dulce cheese
4-ish tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice bread on a bias and lay out on a cookie sheet. Brush some olive oil onto each piece. Toast in the oven until GBD, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool just until you can handle them. Spread a small bit of the Gorgonzola Dulce onto each slice. Think mayo on a sandwich, not cream cheese on a bagel. Salt and pepper one to taste, repeat on the rest.
Cut the bacon slices into lardons. This is a good PFW to add to your culinary lexicon. True lardons are strips of pig-belly fat used in larding meats. The more common French usage refers to small slices of bacon about 1″x1/4″x1/4″. To me, lardon also suggests a certain technique. They’re crispy but not powdery, chewy but not greasy, and you can fold them without them snapping. There are two good ways to achieve this:
- Add lardons to a cold saute pan with just enough vegetable oil in the bottom to avoid sticking as the pan heats up. Over medium heat, slowly sizzle the bacon till there’s an alarming amount of fat in the pan and the little bits turn GBD. Scoop them out with a spider or slotted wooden spoon and place on a paper towel in a dish to get rid of excess oil.
- Line any baking sheet (with sides, oven fires are no fun) with a single piece of foil if possible (oil will run in between layers and get all over the pan which is exactly what you don’t want to happen). Lay bacon slices out flat and place in a cold oven. Turn oven to 400 degrees and cook until GBD, as above. If your oven is already hot from the croutons, don’t sweat, just watch them a little more carefully. Remove and slice into desired size.
Pour the rendered fat into a bowl or coffee mug or something that won’t break and that you can pour out of. Save all the drippings and keep whatever you don’t use in the fridge for later use. Great for hash browns or sauteed greens. If the oven’s been on for the croutons or the lardon rendering, set this vessel on the stove top to stay warm. Fill a medium size saucepan halfway with water and set on high heat to come to a boil.
The next steps are for four servings of salad. If this is a dinner date, cut everything in half.
In a medium size bowl add the diced shallot, Dijon mustard, and sherry vinegar and whisk until well combined. Hold off on salt (plenty in bacon and fat) but add a few grinds of pepper. Slowly whisk in an equal amount of rendered bacon drippings to vinegar. Taste. Add bacon fat a couple teaspoons at a time, tasting in between, until you’re satisfied (some people like a more tangy dressing, others a more rich, bacon-y flavor). This should help you get a good emulsion that will hold.
Pour this into the bottom of a large metal bowl. Add washed and dried frisee and endive on top. Salt and pepper the greens well. Sprinkle bacon on top of greens. Toss all together well. The residual heat from the bacon drippings through the metal bowl will wither the greens ever so slightly. This is good. Portion the salad into four bowls.
Once the water is boiling, add the white vinegar. Crack eggs into a small ramekin or bowl and gently slide the egg into the rapidly boiling water. Wait 30 seconds and add the next egg. I like to cook each for about 90 seconds which leaves nice soft whites and a runny yolk. Cook longer - up to 4 minutes - to desired consistency. Spoon an egg onto the top of each salad and add a couple grinds of pepper and a pinch of salt. If you made croutons, add two or three hanging off the side of the bowl.
Before you eat, cut into the egg and watch the yolk’s yellow slowly run into the greens. Take a bite of the warm/cold/crunchy/tender bliss. Now that’s a sexy salad.
Possible additions:
- Cremini mushrooms, sliced (Not a fan of raw mushrooms but if you are, go for it.)
- Thinly sliced red onion (Maybe if you used spinach. the frisee is plenty peppery on its own.)
Version 3: The Poor and Lonely
If you’re home alone and realize you have enough ingredients to kind of get the job done you can do what I did tonight. I found myself with a bag of salad (iceberg, spinach, purple cabbage, and carrots) that I wanted to use before it turned brown. I always keep some sherry vinegar and Dijon on hand. I happened to have some thick bacon and a lone shallot. I made the same dressing as described above. I didn’t have any white vinegar and didn’t want to part with any of my higher-shelf bottles so my poached egg was a little amoeba-like. No croutons. The result was surprisingly awesome.
This goes to show that while the real recipe is a classic for a reason, you shouldn’t be afraid to swap out major ingredients in order to utilize what you’ve got on hand. Recipes are not a classical concerto to be mastered but more like free-form jazz which benefits from a little personality and improvisation.
