Sunday Salads- Curly Endive Salad with Bacon, Chanterelles, and a Poached Egg

Friends. I have no been eating enough salad lately.

I came back from visiting a few months ago on a veggie eating mission. I was so excited about vegetables! And lettuce! I was eating so much lettuce.

I am embarrassed to tell you how much cake I’ve eaten in the last week. How many gross sugary candies that have been put near me that I have scarfed down. How much bread I’ve consumed. It hasn’t been good. I’m not going to give you numbers.

So it’s probably time to get jazzed about salad again. It’s already started a little bit, I walked by my favourite green grocer and they had the most beautiful swiss chard out, and something stirred in me. The part of me that loves healthy foods. The part of me that has been pushed down in favour of sour cherries and fuzzy peaches.

I never eat candy. What is up with me lately?

Anyways. Salad.

This salad is a slight twist on a French bistro classic. Slightly bitter frissee lettuce, tossed with a dijon vinegrette, sprinkled with flecks of bacon, and topped with a poached egg. It is the best salad. And you can eat it for any meal of the day. It’s a brilliant thing.

There are two twists on this staple. The first was just that I couldn’t find frissee. So I used curly endive. It’s fabulous, but use frissee if you can. Butter lettuce would also be appropriate here.

The second twist is the addition of some beautiful chanterelle mushrooms. I just added these on because I couldn’t resist buying them. I love chanterelles, and there season is so fleeting. You have to put them on everything while you can.

Of course, you could omit them, or use another kind of mushroom, I wouldn’t judge you for that. But if you can find chanterelles. Do it.

Curly Endive and Bacon Salad with a Poached Egg, and Chanterelles.

3 cups Curly Endive, washed and torn into small pieces.

100 grams Thickly Cut Smoked Bacon, cut into small rectangular pieces.

200 grams Chanterelle Mushrooms

2 Eggs

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 tsp Grainy Dijon

2 tbsp Lemon Juice

Salt and Pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

In a frying pan over medium-low heat slowly render out of the bacon, so it get’s nice and crisp but doesn’t dry out.

Scoop bacon pieces out of the fat and put them on a towel lined plate to cool.

Clean the chanterelles- with a pastry brush, carefully brush out all the dirt. With a paring knife cut the very bottom of the mushroom off, just a tiny bit, and then cut the mushrooms into wuaters or sixths, depending on the size.

In a small frying pan warm up the extra 2 tbsp of olive oil.

Add in the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are nicely browned. Season generously with salt and pepper and set to the side.

In a small bowl mix together the remaining olive oil, lemon juice and dijon.

Poach your eggs- gently crack your eggs into the pot of gently boiling water.

Let them cook for about 3 minutes, or until, when gently lifted from the water with a slotted spoon, the whites feel hard but the yolk still feels soft.

Mix the endive with the dressing. Divide it into two bowls.

Sprinkle the bacon and chanterelles onto the lettuce, and then place a poached egg onto each bowl.

And done. Get it in you.

BLT Salad

This summer, as anyone who has spent 10 minutes talking to me in the last year knows, is the year everyone I know got married out of town. We were invited to weddings from Brazil, to Rhode Island, to Vancouver island and seemingly everywhere in between. It’s been an extremely fun, love filled summer.

With great disappointment I had to turn down the invitation to Brazil, but I did head out to the other side of the country to go to my cousins immaculate wedding in Goat Island, RI. I will post pictures of that event soon, (and some of the cake I made in the hotel room- holy stress batman) but I made the trip a proper vacation and spend the week beforehand in Toronto hanging out with my mom.

Something you may not know about me; I am a huge Mama’s girl. Huge.

My Mom is woman of extraordinary strength and will, in the most understated way. She is tenacious, she is dedicated and she is almost unbearably kind. I could not adore her more if I tried.

My mom lives in this amazing old house in Kensington Market, a funky old neighbourhood right downtown in Toronto, surrounded on one side by Little Italy, on another by Little Portugal, and on the other by Chinatown. There are the most wonderful produce shops, my new favourite butcher, and my Mom knows everyone by name.

Which is to say we ate in and made dinner nearly every night. Which was perfect.

My mom let’s me lead in the kitchen, which is cute because she easily knows as much about food as I do. This is one of her favourite summer dinners, and now it’s mine. It’s the perfect way to use up the last of summers tomatoes, and it takes only a few minutes of cooking, which means more time sitting in the backyard, having a glass of rose, and talking to your mom.

BLT Salad

*we had burrata, the most glorious of cheeses, in the fridge so we used that, but goats cheese, or shavings of parm, or no cheese at all will be fine here.

2 cups cubed bread

2 cups cherry tomatoes

150g thick cut bacon, cut into lardons

1 cup arugula

1 cup fresh basil

100g cheese (see note)

1/2 lemon

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

In a frying pan on medium heat fry up the bacon until crispy. Drain.

Clean the frying pan, then put back over medium-low heat.

Pour in a large glug of oil and fry the bread until nice and crispy, season with salt and pepper. Put into a large bowl.

Half cherry tomatoes, tear the basil, wash the arugula and mix it all in with the bread and the bacon. Add the juice of the lemon and a bit more olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the cheese on top if using.   

Carbonara

They say that scent is the sense most linked to memory and I think, despite not knowing who they are, that they’re right. I think about it occasionally, if a man walks by wearing Jordan’s old cologne and I get a flash in my head of his old apartment, or the way freshly cut rhubarb makes me think of my mom making pie, but never is it more obvious to me then when I smell bacon.

Bacon, which I have eaten literally hundreds of times in at least dozens of ways.

But every time I smell bacon cooking all I can think of is a pale pale yellow bowl with thin red and blue stripes around the top of the inside. I can see it vividly, sitting on top of the glass tabletop from my childhood backyard, with our neighbours overgrown shrubs turning into trees in the background. I can feel the warmth of the hot Toronto summers, but mostly what I see is the Spaghetti carbonara inside that striped bowl, and what I smell is bacon.

It was the ultimate summer meal, it took minutes to throw together, cook bacon, cook pasta, toss with eggs and pepper and parmesan, put on table. The speed of it was important not only because my Mom was a busy woman, but also so the burners wouldn’t be on and heat up the house.

For me, this pasta is the epitome of simple Italian food, and I am a snob about it. I adamantly don’t believe that there should be anything in it besides pasta, eggs, parm, pepper, bacon and salt. I don’t like cream in mine, i think it should be creamy enough as is. The crucial thing is that everything be of great quality. Using DeMecca pasta will not give you good carbonara. Using a brand, made in Italy, that has 100%duram semolina flour is important. (I have found, although I’m sure there are lots of exceptions to this rule, that the pasta in boxes is often of a lesser quality then the kind in a bag with the label stapled to the top.)

Good eggs are also crucial, and maybe most important is the parm. Try to get grana padano, or real parmesanno reggiano.

And also, don’t skip on the pepper. The name Carbonara means black, like coals, and though I don’t like quite that much pepper in mine it should have a fair bit.

Spaghetti Carbonara

10 thick slices of the best bacon you can get. Pancetta is a lovely subsistute as well.

2 Free Range Organic Eggs

3/4 cup Grated Parmesano Reggiono, or Grana Padano

1 package Very good Quality Spaghetti, or Spaghettini

Salt and Pepper

Cut the bacon into thick pieces.

Fry them on medium heat until wonderful and crispy, but with a little chew to them still.

Strain and set aside.

Get a big pot of water on high heat.

Meanwhile mix your eggs, parm and a healthy cracking of pepper.

I was a little crazy this time and added a bit of parsley. You could do that too if you wanted.

Now put that strange eggy sauce in the bottom of a large bowl.

Now, perhaps you have a good stove and your water is boiling already. In that case, throw your pasta in, give it a good stir and cook it depending on the package instructions, but basically if until it is cooked throw with a bit of bite to it yet. If you don’t have a good stove, throw on some Aretha and dance around a bit, and then add your pasta, stir it a bit and cook it by the package instructions. Whatever works for you.

Once it’s cooked strain it and then quickly put it into that big bowl with the sauce in the bottom and give it a good toss. You want to move quickly now.  If you take to long the eggs with curdle, but if you move just fast enough you’ll have a wonderful silky sauce that wraps around each noodle. And it will be glorious.