There are foods I make because I’ve found a recipe I want to try, and then there are foods I make so often that calling them a recipe feels slightly ridiculous. This salad falls squarely into the second category.
It takes about five minutes. There are no measurements. I use whatever lettuce happens to be in the refrigerator, although the rest of the cast has become fairly predictable: tomato, cucumber, red onion, avocado and blue cheese. If I’m making one for my son at the same time, peppers go into his. I don’t particularly like peppers, and one of the privileges of being the person holding the knife is that nobody can make me put them in mine.
The tomatoes, however, are another matter entirely. I especially love heirloom tomatoes when I can find good ones. They’re strange and lumpy and never seem terribly concerned with looking like the tomato emoji. Slice one open, though, and suddenly a salad that took almost no effort feels considerably more interesting.
Then comes cucumber, a little red onion, avocado and, finally, the ingredient around which this whole operation revolves: blue cheese.
I’m generous with it.
If I’m going to eat blue cheese, I want to encounter blue cheese. Frequently.
“If I’m going to eat blue cheese, I want to encounter blue cheese. Frequently.”
Once everything is chopped, I stop for approximately three seconds to admire it, because a freshly assembled salad is one of those foods that looks disproportionately impressive compared with the work involved.
Then I dress it right in the bowl.
First comes good olive oil. The bottle I’m using right now came from Italy, courtesy of my son’s girlfriend, which makes it particularly easy to love. Thank you. Love you. Please keep dating him.
Then kosher salt, freshly ground pepper and a lot of freshly squeezed lemon juice. I want enough lemon to cut through the richness of the avocado and blue cheese and mingle with the olive oil and tomato juices at the bottom of the bowl.
On the day I filmed this, some of it also mingled with my clothes.
Clutz.
There’s no separate dressing to make and no little bowl to whisk. Once everything gets tossed together, the blue cheese begins to crumble into the lettuce, the avocado softens around the edges, and the lemon, olive oil and tomato juices become their own dressing. It’s creamy and acidic and salty and fresh, with little pockets of blue cheese showing up exactly as often as I’d hoped they would.
FIVE-MINUTE VERSION SALAD
Ingredients
Lettuce
Heirloom tomato, when available
Cucumber
Red onion
Avocado
Bell pepper, if you’re my son
Blue cheese, generously
Good olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Lots of fresh lemon juice
Method
Chop everything and put it into a bowl. Drizzle generously with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and squeeze fresh lemon over the top. Toss well. No measuring required.
The foods that become part of our lives are rarely the complicated ones. They’re the things we learn to make almost without thinking, adjusting them slightly for whoever happens to be sitting at the table.
I love cooking when I have time for it, but I also love food that understands I may have other things to do. Five minutes is sometimes exactly the amount of effort I’m willing to give lunch. That doesn’t mean lunch has to be boring.
And if I can make it with a beautiful heirloom tomato, a chunk of blue cheese and olive oil that traveled home from Italy with someone I love, even better.
Just aim the lemon away from your shirt.
