Will's Eats: A Couple of Parts of... : Lesson 9 : LCB at Home

The starter and the dessert were not up to snuff. These two things simply didn't "work" as written. Allow me to explain.

The starter was Wilted Dandelion Salad with Bacon (Salade de Pissenlits aux Lardons).

The darn dandelions didn't wilt and it therefore ended up a rather overly crunchy salad because of the spines of the dandelions . I've since read that there are two sorts of dandelion leaves around for salad; one the green one that we normally encounter in shops and the other a yellowish, soft, variant that was probably what was called for in this dish (probably only available in France). Something has to change to make this plate acceptable.

It's a bunch of dandelions with garlic croutons; bacon (lardon), with a typical Parisian style dressing of light olive oil (that's where I deviated from their recipe - they had written vegetable oil but it was probably done to accommodate the American market/palate - we'd never had done that for real in Le Cordon Bleu ), sherry vinegar and mustard. Lastly, top it with a lightly poached egg (which turned out to be an excellent idea)

The wilted bit is where a little hot/warm reduction from degalzing the bacon-pan is poured over the salad at the last moment. Very little wilting happened (okay, none). Other than that, the dressing was fine, the croutons were tasty, the bacon a diversion and the dandelions tough. The same thing but done with romaine or spinach might have been all right.

Wasn't "bad" as such (some had seconds) but it didn't hit the spot.

The Fruit Salad with Red Berry Coulis (Ananas à la Ninon)

was a quite ordinary fruit salad, each fruit (pineapple, bananas, strawberry) sliced very thin and individually marinated in a tablespoon of two of kirsch. The fruit plus a raspberry/strawberry coulis and that was it. Nothing more. The very very thin sliced fruits made for a better texture but little else was special in this case. We enhanced it with a plain white angel food cake (to use up the dozens of eggs white saved [frozen] from previous weeks; that livened it up a little bit more.

The cake "saved" this from being a very ordinary dessert.