{"id":6652,"date":"2011-09-09T11:45:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T09:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=6652"},"modified":"2013-02-06T11:54:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T10:54:50","slug":"mixed-salad-with-a-fried-egg-or-salade-composee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=6652","title":{"rendered":"Mixed Salad with a Fried Egg, or Salade compos\u00e9e"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is one of the dishes I have been preparing for ages and would have never thought of posting about if it hadn’t been for the fact that not a single one of my friends or family members makes it. A couple of days ago the Tandoori-Style Salad on Baking Devils’s blog<\/a> has reminded me I have been planning this post for some time and that warm September days are probably still a good period to write about a nourishing, but light salad.<\/p>\n

“Salade compos\u00e9e” \u00a0(mixed salad) is not something you will find in standard French cookery books. You also have slim chances of being served it in a French house and in most French restaurants. I first tasted it when a friend took me for lunch in Paris announcing we would go to a very cheap restaurant serving most extraordinary salads. The restaurant was cheap indeed, it served only salads (all based on lettuce), each of them looked very exotic to me for one reason: they all had a fried egg or\/and other warm ingredients served on top and were really huge. Since then I have noticed only some cheap, quick, small restaurants serve this kind of salads and you don’t find them in every French city. The only exception is Lyon. “Salade lyonnaise” is very similar (it contains bacon, green leaves, cro\u00fbtons and poached eggs), but I have already seen it served there with boiled eggs or without eggs.<\/p>\n

One day I decided to prepare my own “salade compos\u00e9e” and since then I have prepared hundreds of them, every time different, but every time with two permanent items: lettuce (or other green leaves) and a fried egg. It is healthy, quick, easy and could be called “put-whatever-you-want” salad (but, please, don’t skip the fried egg!). Technically this salad is great fun to eat. First, you serve it in a big bowl, which usually contains the green salad for the whole family. Secondly, everyone has his or her own method and order of eating it. Some start by combining everything with the dressing, others leave the fried egg for the end and have it soaked in the dressing. When served for the first time, people always wonder where to start, which is quite amusing to observe.\u00a0I always eat a bit of the salad and then break the liquid egg yolk, so that it blends with the salad ingredients and the vinaigrette sauce…<\/p>\n

This salad is great for a weekend brunch, lunch and dinner. Apart from the fried egg I also like putting some other warm ingredients, like grilled bacon\/sirloin\/chorizo or cheese cubes. If you are vegetarian, skip the ham\/bacon and put some cheese or tofu for extra proteins (check the Tandoori marinated tofu on Baking Devils<\/a>, it really sounds amazing). It can be served simply with good bread, but goat cheese toasts are perfect too.<\/p>\n

Preparation: 15 minutes<\/em><\/p>\n

Ingredients (serves one):<\/em><\/p>\n

5 – 7 iceberg or other salad leaves<\/em><\/p>\n

1 big tomato (I used 5 mini San Marzano tomatoes)<\/em><\/p>\n

several cucumber slices<\/em><\/p>\n

1 big slice of ham\/grilled sirloin or bacon or any other cold meat (I used smoked and grilled sirloin)<\/em><\/p>\n

1 egg (or two if you feel very hungry!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Vinaigrette with mustard:<\/em><\/p>\n

1 tablespoon olive oil<\/em><\/p>\n

1 heaped teaspoon mustard<\/em><\/p>\n

3 tablespoons vinegar of your choice (balsamico tastes great here, but I often use rice vinegar)<\/em><\/p>\n

(chopped chives or other herbs)<\/em><\/p>\n

salt and pepper<\/em><\/p>\n

Take a big bowl (for example with 20 cm diameter).<\/p>\n

Tear the salad leaves, cut the tomato into pieces, slice the cucumber.<\/p>\n

Cut the ham or sirloin into bite-sized pieces.<\/p>\n

Arrange the salad, the tomato, the cucumber and the ham in the bowl.<\/p>\n

Prepare the salad dressing and pour it over the salad.<\/p>\n

Heat a pan and fry an egg.<\/p>\n

Put the egg on the top of the salad, sprinkle some salt and pepper over it and, if you have, chopped herbs.<\/p>\n

Serve with bread or toast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of the dishes I have been preparing for ages and would have never thought of posting about if it hadn’t been for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,77,10,125,183,22],"tags":[45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6652"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12907,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions\/12907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}