Baby Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
Serves 2 for dinner, or 4 as a side-dish

4 slices of bacon, diced
1 shallot, fine mince (or an 1/8 cup finely minced red onion, if you must)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar — no substitutes this time.  this is the real deal.
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp dried mustard
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 package baby spinach (about 6 cups)
1 cup white mushrooms, sliced paper thin (about half a small package)
1/4 cup red onion, sliced paper thin
2 hard-boiled eggs, cut into wedges

Go ahead and put your eggs on to boil.  Seriously, I know you don’t have any sitting around in your fridge.  For the record, I like to start mine in cold water, bring to a rapid boil over high heat, cover and switch the heat off.  20 minutes later the eggs are perfectly cooked.  Then drop the whole pan under the faucet and run cool water in until the eggs are chilled enough to handle.

While the eggs are cooking, drop the bacon into a large skillet over medium heat.  The closer the bacon gets to done, the lower I drop the heat.  It takes 7-10 minutes for the bacon to get beautifully golden and crispy.  Remove with slotted spoon and let the bacon drain on a paper towel while you finish the dressing.

You should have about 3 tbsps of drippings left in the pan. Add some olive oil if you’re short to round it out. Gently saute the shallot over medium heat until its lovely and golden.  Now add the vinegar, sugar, mustards, a healthy grind of pepper and a pinch of salt and whisk to combine, scraping up all the little bacony bits that stuck to the pan.  Allow to simmer for 1-2 minutes so the dressing can thicken up and for some of the bite of the vinegar to cook off. If you really feel the need to wilt your baby spinach, or if you’re using the adult spinach leaves, toss the greens into the skillet for the last 30-60 seconds of cooking, being sure to flip/stir the spinach to ensure even wilting.

In a large bowl, combine the spinach, mushrooms and red onions and toss gently. Pour the warm dressing straight from the skillet into the bowl and quickly toss to coat evenly.  Now sprinkle over those yummy bacony bits.  You forgot about them, didn’t you?  No you didn’t, you’ve been snacking on them the whole time you’ve been cooking.  Wait, that was me.

Season the egg wedges with a bit of salt.  Serve the salad in a big bowl with the wedges of egg adorning the outsides.  Look at that, what a pro.

If you’ve never heard of Columbia Restaurant, it means you haven’t spent much time in Florida.  It’s a chain of about a dozen restaurants that to my knowledge is restricted to the Sunshine State.  To be perfectly honest, it’s not a very spectacular restaurant overall.  It definitely caters to the tourists and the snow birds, and as a college student, I found it severely overpriced.

So why is it worth mentioning?  Because they have a spectacular salad on their menu, called the 1905 salad, named for the year their flagship restaurant opened in Ybor City, a district in Tampa.  The 1905 salad is Columbia’s big ta-dah, because all the servers know the recipe by heart and whip it up table-side.  This should clue you in to how simple and fast you can prepare this for a weeknight dinner.  The classic is with ham, which you can swap out for turkey or shrimp.  I like the combo of ham and turkey, but rock it out to your tastes.  Oh and did I mention it was really delicious?

Columbia Restaurant’s 1905 Salad
Makes 2 giant entree portions, or 4 appetizer/side dish portions

For the Salad:
1 small head of iceberg lettuce, chopped
2 vine ripe tomatoes, diced
1/4 lb swiss cheese, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 lb deli ham, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 lb deli turkey, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 cup green spanish olives, sliced
2 tbsp fresh grated romano or parmesan cheese

For the Dressing:
1/8 cup white wine vinegar
1/8 cup lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp dried oregano
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish

In a large bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients except the olive oil, along with salt and a fair bit of fresh ground black pepper.  Pour in the olive oil in a slow stream, whisking vigorously until fully incorporated.  (Alternatively, you can also drop all the ingredients into the blender, or mix them quickly with an immersion blender as I did here.  The bowl-whisked dressing is traditional.)

You know the drill.  Drop all of the salad ingredients into the large bowl, coating everything in the dressing.  Portion out into serving bowls, and top with more ground pepper and romano cheese as desired.

Pre-dressing…

And yum…

This really makes for a filling, yet light dinner.  The flavors are very balanced and the dressing is super yum.  And I seriously cannot stress enough how quickly you can whip this up on a weeknight.  Enjoy everybody!  Oh, and thanks to that magazine that published this recipe which I found in that snobby coffee shop in Sarasota that I never patronized again.

I’m a big advocate for whisking up a super simple salad dressing rather than relying on the fatty, chemically bottled alternatives from the super market. I mean, seriously, it takes all of 3 minutes.   Typically I just rock a vinaigrette on some baby greens.  Tonight, however, I spotted a mixed container of mache and butter lettuce on the refrigerated shelf at Trader Joes, which made me a very happy lady.  If you’ve never tried mache, do it.  Do it now.  It’s tiny, sweet, tender and slightly nutty.  And for a lettuce as mild and gentle as mache, this called for a special dressing.

Yogurt Chive Dressing
yields about 1/2 cup of dressing

1/4 cup greek yogurt (I use Fage 0% greek yogurt)
1 small clove garlic, very finely minced
Zest of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp lemon juice (about half a lemon)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp chopped chives (I use my kitchen scissors for easy cutting)
1/4 tsp sugar or honey
large pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper

Whisk together all of the above ingredients in a large bowl.  Season and sweeten to taste, depending on how tart your yogurt and lemon juice are.  Add  4 cups loosely packed greens and gently toss to coat.  Serve as a delightfully light and simple side dish for chicken or fish, such as the breaded pan-fried chicken tenders pictured above.