This salad of curly endive with bacon is a French bistro traditional and it’s certainly one of my favorites. I usually serve it to associates at dinner events, often adopted by one other bistro dish, for instance boeuf bourguignon or Provençal rooster with pastis. That is what is thought over right here as delicacies à la bonne franquette — informal, unfussy cooking (extra on that under). Certainly, to make this salad you want solely two essential components: the lettuce and the bacon.
Salade frisée aux lardons / Salad of curly endive with bacon
Let’s begin with the lettuce. Salade frisée is displayed proudly in French farmers markets, its yellow coronary heart framed by a darkish inexperienced crown. This sort of salad is big. It might probably measure as much as two ft (60 cm) in diameter when unfold open. After I took the photograph at proper, it just about coated the picnic desk on my veranda. So until you might be cooking for a military, you gained’t want all of it to your salad. What to do with the remaining? Both a repeat efficiency or you need to use it to make Italian lettuce soup, a recipe I hope to publish sooner or later quickly.
Now the bacon. In France lardons, or bacon sticks, are bought precut in supermarkets. However for greatest outcomes with this salad, it’s preferable to begin with a thick strip of bacon — about 1/3 inch (1 cm) — and minimize the lardons your self. The flavour and texture are higher, and your friends will admire it. If that’s not doable the place you reside, purchase thick-cut bacon strips and chop them. My recommendation: be beneficiant with the bacon. It’s the star of the present.
What else? Loads of garlic within the dressing of your alternative. I choose a tangy lemon-olive oil sauce. Balsamic French dressing and mustard French dressing are additionally common. Some cooks incorporate melted bacon fats into the sauce, however I don’t as I discover {that a} bit heavy.
To make the salad, you put together the sauce within the backside of a giant salad bowl, stir within the minced garlic and pile the chopped and washed leaves on high. Simply earlier than serving, you fry the bacon. The salad involves the desk with the bacon piping scorching.
There are lots of variations on this primary salad. Croutons are sometimes added. Generally the salad is topped with a poached or soft-boiled egg. I’ve seen different additions as effectively. However personally I choose to omit these extras. I discover that the salad is at its greatest with out them.
As for à la bonne franquette, the expression derives from the phrase franc, that means ‘frank’. Within the seventeenth century, Molière used à la franquette, within the sense of talking frankly, in his farce on French medication, ‘The Physician Inspite of Himself’. Within the sixteenth century, in accordance with a Canadian authorities site, à la franquette, evoking simplicity, was utilized in distinction with à la française (‘French type’), that means ‘with ceremony’ or ‘luxuriously’.
Whereas researching the origin of the time period, I stumbled throughout some amusing translations of the phrase ‘France’, which I had mistakenly thought was etymologically linked to the phrase ‘franc‘. It seems that within the Navajo language, France is called Dáághahii Dineʼé bikéyah, or ‘the land of those that put on the mustache’, whereas in Maori, France is called Wīwī, which derives from — you guessed it — ‘Oui, oui‘.
Glad cooking.
