Frisée and Green Apple Salad

It’s January, but you wouldn’t guess it here in Paris. The streets are flooded with sunlight; it’s warm enough for a light jacket. If I had to guess, I’d say it was the end of March–that moment just before spring where you can smell moisture evaporating as the snow starts to melt, where you can sense the flowers getting ready to bloom, the lawns beginning to sprout with green again. It puts me in the mood for something fresh and crisp and green, and then I remember that it’s still the dead of winter, and fresh and crisp and green in Paris on January 16th is hard to come by. Luckily, I have my ways.

One of my first jobs in the kitchen as a child was making salad dressing. It’s not hard; I do it now while doing 9 million other things in the kitchen–stirring, boiling water, washing produce–but I remember the first time my grandmother handed me the baby food jar I would use as a vessel how important the task seemed.

Twice as much oil as vinegar (I liked to do half vinegar, half lemon juice–just another way I did things a little bit differently from everyone else, a sign of things to come). A tiny bit of mustard, salt and pepper. Then I screwed the lid on tightly and shook as much as my little arms could until, like magic, the simple ingredients came together into a thick liquid the color of sand, which we would pour over prepared greens, pomegranate seeds and tangerine sections at the last minute, just before sitting at the table.

When I first came to France, everything was different. I remember watching as my host mother prepared salad dressing in the bottom of the large bowl she would use for serving, blending everything together with the tines of a fork and leaving it to sit until the rest of the meal was prepared, dumping the salad ingredients on top of the dressing–endive, apples, beets, goat cheese–and tossing with tongs right before we sat.

I’ve kept both traditions: in Paziols, where dressing is made by the liter every few days, we have a special container marked with centiliter amounts up the side so that the kids can make it themselves. I find myself often forgetting the “recipe” we have printed on the wall; it’s something I made up so that the kids would have directions to follow, but as the Sous-Chef and I know (and the other girls soon learned), dressing is not a science–you need to taste as you go.

Here in Paris, where I’m more often than not making salads for one, I take a tip from my host family in Mouvaux and blend my dressing in the bottom of my salad bowl: olive oil, cider vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar, a tip from Anne-Marie in Paziols. I use the tines of my fork to blend the ingredients together, and then I use a restaurant trick for tossing: there’s no better kitchen tool than a clean hand, and besides, tossing salad is, like making latkes, one of those strange cooking skills that I still haven’t gotten right (when I do it in my mother’s kitchen, half of the greens end up on the floor).

This winter salad works well with any winter lettuce; I like the green-on-green of Granny Smith apples (pommes Granny in French) and green-and-white frisée, but I’ve done it with endive on many occasions, and it’s just as delicious.

Apple and Frisée Salad

2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. good French mustard
1/4 tsp. salt
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch sugar
1 Granny Smith apple
2 large handfuls winter lettuce

Combine the dressing ingredients in the bottom of your serving bowl using the tines of a fork. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Cut the apple into a large dice, leaving the skin on. Drop the chunks of apple into the dressing and toss lightly; the acid prevents them from browning. If preparing as part of a meal, this can be done a half hour in advance, which allows the apples to soak up some of the dressing.

Just before serving, add the frisée or other winter lettuce to the bowl and toss with a clean hand to ensure coating of all the leaves with the dressing.