Big Hot Wilted Lettuce Salad and Friends

I had an enormous head of verdant Muir lettuce left from my CSA box that needed eating, and soon, so decided that the most sensible way to deal with this abundance of fresh, wholesome leafy greens was to douse them in hot bacon fat. My stomach and I stand by this decision.

Wilted lettuce salad is hardly a new idea, of course, and hot bacon dressing has been making righteous quantities of lettuce considerably more exciting for generations. In my case there wasn't even any actual bacon involved. This salad became the mother of all fridge clear-outs, including a tablespoon of rendered bacon fat left over from Sunday's bacon and eggs, which was clearly waiting in the refrigerator for precisely this moment to shine.

The principle is simple: heat the bacon fat, turn it into a sharp, hot vinaigrette, then toss it with the lettuce so that the leaves soften slightly while retaining enough structure to remind you that you are eating a salad rather than a bowl of cooked greens. That being said, in a kind of culinary paradox, it is amazing how much more lettuce one can consume than usual when it tastes like bacon.

The lettuce needed friends other than the bacon fat, and, since it was close to the day when my new CSA box was arriving, once I started rummaging through the fridge, plenty volunteered. There was half a gorgeous avocado, a hard-boiled egg, some roasted Delilah peppers, a couple of beets, and some leeks vinaigrette, all of which seemed perfectly willing to participate in whatever it was that I thought I was doing. This salad doesn't look like much, but it is both delicious and filling, exactly what you want in a meal salad.

This is very much a template rather than an instruction to reproduce the contents of my refrigerator. Lettuce and hot bacon-fat vinaigrette are the heart of the salad; the friends can come and go according to what needs using. Roasted squash would be good, as would some thinly sliced radishes or another crunchy raw vegetable. Pickled hot peppers could provide some heat. Some pickles, finely chopped, stirred into the dressing could be yummy. Leftover roast potatoes would certainly not be unwelcome. Something crunch might be a good idea.

At some point during salad composition, however, we may have to admit that the lettuce was merely providing cover for our other gustatory intentions...

5 cups roughly torn lettuce

1/2 cup roasted beets, thinly sliced, or drained canned beets

1 roasted Delilah pepper, sliced, about 1/3 cup, or 1/3 cup drained jarred roasted red peppers

1/2 avocado, sliced or cut into chunks

1 hard-boiled egg, quartered

2 Tbsps leeks vinaigrette, well drained

1 Tbsp rendered bacon fat

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1/4 tsp honey

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put the lettuce into a large bowl. It will look like far too much lettuce for one person. This is both deliberate and temporary.

Have all of the other ingredients ready before you make the dressing, since once the hot vinaigrette meets the lettuce, things move fairly quickly.

Put the bacon fat into a small skillet over medium-low heat. Once it has melted and is hot, whisk in the red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and honey, along with a generous grinding of black pepper. Be forewarned that the hot bacon fat may spatter a bit. Let everything heat through and come together, but don't cook it for so long that you boil away the vinegar. Taste carefully and add a little more honey if the dressing seems aggressively rather than pleasantly sharp and, if using leeks vinaigrette in your version, keep in mind that there is already quite an acidic hit there. You will need to balance this. I didn't add salt; between the bacon fat and Dijon, mine didn't need it.

Pour the hot dressing immediately over the lettuce and toss thoroughly. Keep tossing for a minute or so, until the dressing is evenly distributed and the heat has softened and shrunk the lettuce somewhat without reducing it to a slightly slimy and unappetizing mess.

Arrange the beets, roasted pepper, avocado, hard-boiled egg and drained leeks vinaigrette over the dressed lettuce in separate little piles rather than tossing everything together.

Take the whole colorful production to the table in order to admire how it looks considerably more elegant than its fridge-clear-out origins would suggest. I then happily destroyed my handiwork by tossing everything together and scarfing it.