Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [25]
Parsley is the workhorse of the soft herbs because it has so many uses, from seasoning and finishing dishes to being used as an aromatic in sauces and soups. Mint is up there for me; I use a lot of that as well. But my favorite soft herb is dill. While it simply doesn’t go with any red meat, it’s delicious with seafood, salads, and white meats. I love it with potatoes, with roasted beets, with tomatoes. Everybody wants to put basil with tomatoes, but I like dill better. To me dill has a magical flavor, especially when combined with lemon, garlic, and shallots.
Shallot and Garlic
These great aromatics are invaluable, adding sweetness and depth in almost all savory preparations. But they’re not one-note players. You can manipulate them in the way you cook them. Cook them gently and they become sweet. Cook them more aggressively and more caramel notes begin to come out. With garlic, when it’s browned, it becomes nutty and has a great flavor on its own. Caramelized shallots are a hugely influential seasoning in sauces and vinaigrettes. It’s important that you buy them whole; don’t buy peeled garlic and shallots, and certainly never buy prechopped. Those products have lost all their sweetness and have become somewhat bitter from the heat of the processing machines.
Lemon
Lemon brings great acidity to a dish, but it’s a balanced acidity, in terms of both flavor and sweetness. Again, like coriander, it’s this balance that makes it so useful. We don’t usually think of the sweetness of lemons, but they do have a sweetness. On the citrus continuum, oranges have high sweetness and a lower acidity. Limes have great acidity relative to their sweetness. And lemons fall somewhere in between
SPINACH SALAD WITH FRIED EGG, BACON, AND MORELS
In Ohio in the 1970s a party wasn’t a party unless you served a warm spinach salad topped with bacon bits, button mushrooms, hard-boiled egg, and a dressing made with ketchup. I’d lay odds it was someone’s attempt to recreate a traditional frisée and lardons salad using what was available in the Midwest at the time. I’ve taken this mainstay from my childhood uptown with our house-smoked bacon, morel mushrooms, and an egg, dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette (hold the ketchup). I love eggs on salad; poached eggs on a spinach salad are traditional, but I prefer fried. If you don’t make your own bacon, I recommend Nueske’s from Wisconsin (see Sources).
Serves 4
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, or more as needed
8 ounces slab bacon, cut into 1-inch by ¼-inch pieces
1 shallot, thinly sliced
6 ounces morel mushrooms, halved if large
½ cup Chicken Stock or water
6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, or more to taste
4 large eggs
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces fresh spinach leaves (about 8 cups loosely packed), stemmed
Heat a sauté pan glazed with 1 teaspoon of the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the bacon pieces and sauté them until they develop a crispy exterior but remain tender on the inside, adjusting the heat as necessary, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the shallot and sauté until it is translucent, another minute or two. Add the mushrooms, and once they begin to soften, after about 2 minutes, add the stock, scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan as the liquid comes to a boil. Reduce the pan liquid by half. Add the balsamic vinegar, bring to a simmer, and then remove the pan from the heat. Taste the pan sauce looking for a proper balance of fat and acidity. If the sauce tastes too fatty, add another dash of balsamic. If it’s too acidic, correct it with additional extra-virgin olive oil.
Heat a large nonstick pan over medium-low heat. Glaze the pan with the remaining teaspoon of olive oil and crack in the eggs, taking care not to break the yolks. Season each egg with a pinch of salt and some black pepper. Fry the eggs gently until the whites are cooked through but the yolks