For a luxurious lettuce salad, all you need is 3 things
This Feb. 14, 2018 photo provided by Elizabeth Karmel shows her three-ingredient Luxurious Lettuce Salad, in Amagansett, N.Y. This salad is deceptively simple but relies on the absolute best ingredients for it to be a success. That is, fresh butter lettuce, fleur de sel sea salt, and your favorite first-press extra-virgin olive oil. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Karmel)
This recipe is tied to my long-standing love affair with the simple French “salade verte” (green salad). Whenever I am in France, I order a salade verte with everything that I eat. It is a simple salad traditionally made with butter lettuce — sometimes called Boston lettuce — and a mustard-rich perfectly emulsified vinaigrette dressing. The perfect emulsion makes it creamy and it clings lightly to the lettuce, accenting the sweet, delicate leaves with just the right amount of tang.
Before I created my Luxurious Lettuce Salad, I spent years perfecting my vinaigrette so that I could make my favorite French salad at home. But more often than I care to admit, my salads fell short of my memory of the great salade verte. Then one day I spotted a favorite bottle of olive oil and it helped me, quite accidentally, create my perfect dinner salad.
I washed and dried Boston lettuce, sprinkled the leaves with fleur de sel — coarse sea salt — and drizzled it with a few teaspoons of my new olive oil. I tossed the salad, and came back a few minutes later ready to add some vinegar, but I greedily tasted it first. It was perfect! No vinegar necessary. Fresh, clean and luxurious ... thus the name.
And, the rest is history. I have been making this three-ingredient salad to go with everything from steak to beer-can chicken to omelets, stews and soups ever since that day.
LUXURIOUS LETTUCE SALAD
Servings: 2
Start to finish: 10 minutes
1 head Boston or Butter lettuce, washed and dried
Fleur de Sel (a few pinches)
Best quality extra-virgin olive oil
Fresh ground pepper
The method is very simple. Place the lettuce leaves in a large bowl, sprinkle with about 2 pinches of fleur de sel or coarse sea salt. Toss. Drizzle with 1-2 teaspoons (or more to taste) of olive oil, toss very well to coat all the leaves.
Let sit for 5 minutes and toss again. Add a little more oil if the leaves are not coated but be careful not to use too much oil, otherwise the salad will be heavy and the lettuce will get soggy. Add freshly ground pepper if desired.
Nutrition information per serving: 53 calories; 44 calories from fat; 5 g fat (1 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 0 mg cholesterol; 244 mg sodium; 2 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 1 g sugar; 1 g protein.
