5 Ingredients or Fewer
Jero's "Eye-opener lettuce-free salad"
- Serves one person (per serving)
Author Notes
(Please start by clicking on "(...more)" to read some important notes!)
Introduction to this lettuce-free salad
Wether you yourself are your one and only "guest" or you are launching a dinner for 600... fact is we have definitely a situation here:
Unavoidably, recurrent thoughts about lettuce's whereabouts will always interfere with your guest's capability of enjoying a so-called "lettuce-free" salad.
In view of this, no attempt of secluding lettuce can ever really succeed!
In an effort to address this issue, the "Eye-opener lettuce-free salad" is meant for any host to convey a strategy that will focus on allowing lettuce to express its own story of *absence* along the narrative of a fairly simple dish.
This is done with the sole purpose of attaining the utmost genuine freedom from lettuce that any lettuce-free salad could ever offer, to any guest.
To this end -and before we talk about ingredients and preparation- I would like to kindly ask you to observe the following, fairly simple ritual for serving Jero's "Eye-opener lettuce-free salad":
Small individual servings of the finished salad (no more than one serving per guest) should be carried in (or put to display in) the dining room, each of them covered with a leaf of lettuce(sic).
In the very last moment before serving, the host will remove the lettuce leaf before the guest's eyes, clearly signifying its return to the kitchen for gentle recycling purposes.
Thus not only will the guest be able to bid farewell to lettuce, but will also gain soothing insight into the fact that time has come to enjoy some truly lettuce-free experience.
WARNING: As lettuce veils fall from the eyes, sudden enlightenment can occur.
.
—Jero
Ingredients
-
INGREDIENTS FOR ONE SERVING:
-
1
quail egg
-
1/2
pitted Manzanilla olive (You will need the one half with the larger, round hole. The diameter of this hole should approximately equal the diameter of your plastic straw)
-
1
slice of pumpernickel (you are going to use just a fraction of it)
-
some
drops of olive oil (extra virgin)
-
a pinch
of Spanish sweet "pimentón" (Sweet paprika will do)
-
some
Balsamico vinegar
-
a pinch
of sea salt. (If you don't count the salt, this recipe can be considered as a "five-or-less-ingredients-recipe" -So, let's please do NOT count the salt as a full ingredient!)
Directions
- Some preliminary notes: - You will need a small dish and a a spoon. - You will also need a sharp knife, a small tea spoon and a plastic straw. - You are going to sculpt an eye out of your ingredients. - DID YOU KNOW...? the German word "Ei" -pronounced "eye"- means "egg") - Good luck... -INSTRUCTIONS FOR ONE SERVING:
- Boil the quail egg for 5 minutes.
- With the help of the plastic straw, use a sharp knife to cut some circular portions out of the pumpernickel slice. Cut out as many pumpernickel circles as needed to fill the inner void of the 1/2 olive completely with pumpernickel.
- Peel the hard-boiled quail egg and bring it to a lying position (on its side) on top of a cutting board. Your goal now is to cut out a lateral slice or "cap" of approximately 25% of the thickness of the egg. (This slice or "cap" is of no use for purposes of this dish.)
- Through the resulting opening, take out very carefully all of the egg yolk, using the knife and the small tea spoon.
- Now insert the pumpernickel-filled 1/2 olive in place of the extracted egg yolk. Yours is the choice regarding which end of the pumpernickel-filled 1/2 olive will face outwards (the flat endor the rounded end)... But, by all means, the three round(-ish) cuts (the cut in the egg white, the cut in the olive and the cut around the pumpernickel) should be aligned all visibly and concentrically.
- What you got now should resemble a human(?) eye.
- Mash the egg yolk with some olive oil and sweet Pimentón (or sweet paprika) powder and some sea salt to your liking. Put this mixture on a spoon
- Place the arranged egg on top of the egg yolk mixture on the spoon.
- Place the loaded spoon on a small dish, in order to keep it from falling/spilling.
- Draw a quick "Zorro" mark over the "eye" with balsamico vinegar (to simbolize some eyelashes).
- Cover your work with a lettuce leaf
- Now, please... don't forget the previously discussed serving ritual.
- Enjoy shared tears of enlightenment, as lettuce veils fall from everyone's eyes!
See what other Food52ers are saying.