Salads have become one of life’s special meals year-round. Winter, spring, summer or fall, they have taken on their own personality. Eaten raw, roasted, baked or boiled, cold or hot, salads have become the healthy, quick and easy replacement meal for working moms and dads. Think about how increasingly common it is to be served roasted beets, cauliflower, cucumber, eggplant, tomatoes or chile peppers combined with greens or by themselves. Such salads have become popular alternatives to traditional meat and carbohydrate meals like spaghetti and meatballs, meat loaf or tuna fish casserole.

If you haven’t tried salads as an easy, satisfying meal by itself or with a cup of soup, give it a go. You won’t be disappointed. Just add your favorite vinaigrette to some greens and vegetables and voilá—a filling meal like salad appears quickly and almost magically.

Try making your own vinaigrette. You will be surprised at how simple and delicious homemade dressing is—and you’re food will have less salt and more flavor. Merely combine mustards, like Dijon, with oils, such as olive, walnut or vegetable, and different types of vinegars to easily satisfy your taste buds. Or, squeeze some lemon or lime juice with other vinegars to create sensational, tart flavors.

In fact, vinegars give you free rein to vary your salad meal. Such creative preparations become easier than ever because anything that ferments can be used to make homemade vinegar, such as cider vinegar from apples, white vinegar from assorted grains or white wine, red vinegar from red wine or rice vinegar from different types of rice.
You can also use balsamic vinegar, which is actually not made from fermented wine but rather from sweet, white Trebbiano grape pressings that are boiled down to a dark syrup and then aged under rigid restrictions. This increasingly popular Italian vinegar is ideal for dressing greens, ice cream and even fruit. And if you wish to gild the lily, heat up some balsamic and experience a thicker, more sugary vinegar. Americans have developed a taste for this 900-year-old balsamic vinegar that has surely enhanced the popularity of salads as well. In fact, when my sons were young boys, I encouraged them to eat all sorts of vegetables by adding a drop or two of balsamic vinegar to the broccoli or beans being served.

Such food experiences and the tastes we develop are facilitated by our tongues, which actually perceive only five basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami, the Japanese word for savory. Other tastes are learned with the help of our nose, along with any chemical irritation a food creates in the throat and sends the brain the information it needs to distinguish flavors, such as mint, hot pepper or olive oil.

Yet, our food likes and dislikes are all learned at the knees of our parents and from the invitations to dinner extended by the mothers and fathers of our best friends. As a young boy, I had never eaten eggplant until I ate dinner at the home of my Italian friends, who served their son and me eggplant Parmesan. It was my first encounter with the joy of Italian cuisine—an experience I continued to nurture as I got older.

The food preferences we learn at a young age can change, but they seem to stay with us throughout our lives. In fact, smell is one of those tell-tale natural tools that becomes entrenched in our memory banks. I remember walking through an Eastern European senior center in Chicago while visiting my cousins. I was suddenly reminded of our long departed grandmother from Lithuania because of the familiar herbs and spices I smelled as I walked by their kitchen.

A new eating treat I think you will enjoy is frisée salad in combination with other types of lettuce and protein, like poached eggs. Initially this meal seemed odd to me, but it soon became a natural addition to lunch or dinner. The salad looks great on a plate, too, when the curly greens are mounted with a runny, yellow egg yolk, surrounded by a lovely egg white or albumen. It has become one of those delicious meals that satisfies my craving for flavor. Perhaps you will also find it to be a delightful eating experience. It introduces several lunch and dinner options. Try making one of these beauties yourself. They are so pretty to look at when fresh—and different tasting as well. I am confident you will enjoy preparing and eating this simple meal soon, whether with the bacon or the healthier version in step 2 that uses cauliflower.

Frisée and Belgian Endive Salad
Serves 4-6
2 heads frisée lettuce, outer leaves and root ends discarded (if unavailable, substitute with 2 heads Bibb lettuce, torn into small pieces, mixed with 2 cups baby kale, chopped)
2 heads Belgian endive,
sliced into circles
3 strips thick bacon lardon,
cut into ½-inch chunks
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
1 tbsp champagne vinegar
1 clove garlic, diced
1 tsp honey mustard
1 tbsp small capers
1 turn freshly ground black pepper
Pinch sea salt
6 fresh large eggs
1 tsp white vinegar
1. Gently cut, rinse and dry frisée and endive and place in a large salad bowl.
2. Sauté lardon (using pork fat or thick bacon) until crispy, and place on paper towels to drain. For a healthier alternative, replace lardon with cauliflower florets tossed with 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper and ½ teaspoon smoked paprika; roast in a 425F oven for 30 minutes and set aside.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together oil, red-wine and champagne vinegars, garlic, mustard, capers, black pepper and sea salt; set aside.
4. Using tongs, carefully divide lettuce and crispy chunks of lardon or cauliflower among 4 to 6 plates lined up along the counter.
5. Dress each salad with 1 heaping tablespoon dressing.
6. For poached eggs, be sure to use very fresh eggs—the fresher they are, the better they will be for poaching because their white will be thicker.
In a medium, 4-inch-deep sauce
pan, heat water to a simmer with
1 teaspoon white vinegar (to help the eggs coagulate).
7. Crack 1 egg at a time, place it in a small ramekin and pour it into simmering, not boiling, water. Repeat immediately with 1 more egg and simmer both for 3 minutes.
8. Remove poached eggs with a slotted spoon and place 1 on top of each salad plate. Repeat with remaining eggs, 2 at a time, until all 6 eggs are poached. Continue removing with slotted spoon and serve. Bon Appétit!

Please send comments, questions or observations of interest to Chef Alan at [email protected]. For details about past columns, catering or Chef Zox’s blog, please visit www.zoxkitchen.com.