Course: Salads
Cuisine: American
Serves: 4
Main ingredient: Lettuce
Ingredients:
For the Croutons:
4- to 5-ounce chunk of day-old levain or sourdough bread or other chewy, peasant-style bread
2 to 3 tablespoons mild-tasting olive oil
Salt
To Finish the Salad:
2 to 3 heads romaine lettuce {to yield about
1-1/2 pounds usable leaves}
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2/3 cup mild-tasting olive oil
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
[Note: can be lightened a lot.]
a few pinches of salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
[Note: recipes calls for "quite a bit".]
3 ounces of Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
{1-1/2 cups very lightly packed}
2 large cold eggs
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
{1-1/2 lemons}
Optional:
Dijon mustard and cream.
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350.
Cut the bread into 1/2 to 3/4-inch cubes, toss with oil to coat evenly, salt lightly, toss again, and spread on a sheet pan. Roast, rotating the pan as needed, until golden all over, about 8 to 12 minutes. Taste a crouton; it should be well seasoned and slightly tender in the center. Leave to cool on a sheet pan.
Discard the leathery outer leaves of the romaine, then cut off the base of each head and wash and dry the leaves. Go through the leaves, trimming them of discolored, leathery, bruised, or wilted parts, but leave them whole. You need about 1-1/2 pounds of prepared leaves. Layer the leaves with towels if necessary to wick off every drop of water -- wet lettuce will make an insipid salad. Refrigerate until just before dressing the salad.
Whisk together the vinegar, oil, salt, and garlic in a small mixing bowl. Add the eggs, a few sprinkles of cheese, and lots of black pepper. Whisk to emulsify. Add the lemon juice, squeezing it through a strainer to catch the seeds. Whisk again, just to emulsify. Taste the dressing, first by itself and then on a leaf of lettuce, and adjust any seasonings to taste. If the romaine is very sweet, the dressing may already taste balanced and excellent. If it is mineraly, extra lemon or garlic may improve the flavor.
Place the romaine in a wide salad bowl. Add most of the dressing and fold and toss very thoroughly, taking care to separate the leaves and coat each surface with dressing, adding more as needed. Dust with most of the remaining cheese, add the croutons, and toss again. Taste and adjust as before. In general, the tastier the romaine, the less you will need to emphasize other flavors.
Pick out first the larger, then medium, then smallest leaves and arrange on cold plates. Moisten croutons if they are at all dry, and finish salad with a dust of cheese and pepper.
