Hot bacon dressing enhances escarole salad

“OK, everybody, I want you to eat a LOT of salad,” I sang out as my sister and her family noticed the two large bowls of escarole with hot bacon dressing. “Uncle Mark thinks I made too much, and I want to prove him wrong.”

“I didn’t say it was too much. I just said it was a lot,” Mark murmured, still sounding a little dazed at the sight of all the salad.

So how did it come to this?

Regular readers may remember how, a few weeks ago, as we were anticipating a holiday visit from my sister, brother-in-law, nephew and niece, I was trying to decide which way to prepare spinach.

That little dilemma resolved itself in the produce section at Schiel’s Family Market, where I was heading for the raw spinach — until I spotted the display of escarole and endive.

Those bitter greens seemed to cry out to me in chorus: “How long has it been since you used us in a salad? Come on, it’s our turn.”

So I bought two heads of the escarole — that’s the one with leaves that tend to be flat rather than curly. Using an old family recipe that probably has never been written down, I washed and cut the leaves into bite-size pieces, sliced a raw onion, and pan-fried five slices of bacon that I’d also cut into bite-size pieces.

When the fat was mostly rendered out of the bacon, I poured the hot drippings and the bacon bits over the escarole and then scooped up portions of the greens and seared them in the hot pan, which ever so slightly cooked and softened them. All that was left to do was add the onion plus a few capfuls of vinegar and toss it all together.

Since I did have a big pile of salad, I found it easier to do the tossing in two separate bowls.

“It tastes so good,” was a comment I heard a lot, especially from my mom and sister. But everyone had a generous portion or two, and I noticed with some satisfaction there were no leftovers. (See, Mark dear, I made just enough.)

Later I glanced through Times Leader files to see if we’d ever published anything similar, and found a recipe for hot dressing from Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street organization that mentions rendering fat from pancetta rather than bacon. It also talks about using just one tablespoon of that animal fat, along with three tablespoons of olive oil. When I thought about it, I realized that would be a more heart healthy option, but probably still give you some meaty flavor. So maybe I’ll try that sometime.

But this time, I followed the family tradition of straight bacon fat, complemented by vinegar.

There’s one other tradition we observed — listening to a story my mom has told more than once, about the time she was in grade school and a teacher said something like, “Class, we all know about lettuce and spinach. Can anyone name another leafy vegetable?”

My mom put up her hand and said “endive,” which a boy named Jimmy apparently thought was unbelievably exotic. “Show-off!” he yelled, in a shout that she remembers so many decades later. But she hadn’t been showing off. She just knew her parents had told her they had endive in their backyard garden.

Endive would work in this recipe as well as escarole. The Milk Street recipe also suggests using frisée, radicchio and arugula interchangably. Hmm. The names of all those other leafy vegetables would probably have blown young Jimmy’s mind.

MT’s ESCAROLE SALAD

12-16 ounces of escarole or other leafy greens

5 slices of bacon, give or take a slice

1 medium onion, sliced

vinegar, to taste

Instructions: Clean the escarole and cut into bite-size pieces. Set aside.

Slice the onion and set aside.

Cut the bacon into bite-size pieces and heat in pan on stove top until bacon is cooked and has rendered much of its fat. Pour bacon drippings and bacon bits over escarole. Then briefly place heaping forkfuls of escarole, one after the other, into the hot pan just long enough to sear them slightly and to soak up any remaining bacon drippings. When all of the escarole has been seared and returned to the bowl, add the slices of raw onion plus as much vinegar as you find pleasing. Toss and serve.

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