The salad part of this salad barely matters—good news since you can throw whatever you have on hand into it—because its success lies in the dressing. A dressing that gets better when you forget about it, which we discovered when we made it a couple of times over a particularly busy week. James, who makes really great salads, was on a kick where he was using avocado and capers in them to glorious effect. He’d make and dress the salad, thinking we were about ready to eat, but then we’d answer a few more emails, try to figure out why an episode of something wasn’t downloading, finish folding that last bit of laundry so we could finally relax for the night… and the salad sat around more than once. While the lettuce suffered, the avocado did that thing it does in a salsa, where it marinates and breaks down and makes everything else more luscious. So don’t dress your leaves until you’re actually cuing up your episode and sitting on the couch…I mean…setting your table (ahem) but make the dressing and go ahead and answer maybe two more emails, while it gets even better.
This story and the recipe that goes with it are in “FAST”, issue 021 of Le Sauce Magazine. Get it at: lesauce.com/app