This is a lovely Spring dinner appetizer salad or quick lunch one. It is vibrant in color and punchy in taste; pretty much the bastard child of the traditional French pissenlit (dandelion) salad with bacon and asparagus Mimosa, the classic egg topping for the first green spears of spring.
You could put the eggs through a sieve and sprinkle the result over the top of the salad so that it looks like scattered mimosa blossoms (hence the name) but I felt that chunky, rough-cut eggs would stand up better to the bitter dandelion greens and that the added texture would be a good thing. And it was.
The salad above is an appetizer plate of the dish, but I will be making this again in a big bowl for lunch with extra avocado. You could add bacon or croutons to the mix as well.
2 large bunches of dandelion greens
2 ripe avocadoes
2 Spring onions, finely chopped or 1/2 a shallot, peeled and finely diced
3 eggs
1/4 cup white wine or sherry vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp ice water
Boil water in a small saucepan. As soon as it comes to a rolling boil, gently add the eggs and cook for exactly seven minutes. As soon as the seven minutes are up, remove the eggs from the boiling water and place them in a bowl of water to which you have added ice. This will keep the eggs from continuing to cook.
Wash and dry the dandelion greens. Cut them into bite-sized pieces and remove the stem bits. You can use them in stir fries or add them to soup or other cooked greens, but they are tougher than the leafy portions and the texture doesn't quite work in salad.
Add the greens to your salad bowl. Dice your avocadoes and add them to the bowl. Toss in the Spring onion or shallot.
Whisk the vinegar, oil, water and mustard together in a small bowl until emulsified. Check for taste; you may want more vinegar or a tad more oil to tone down the acidity. I do not add salt to the dressing as I feel that mustard makes the vinaigrette salty enough, but that is a matter of individual taste buds.
Peel the eggs and roughly chop them into the dressing. I tend to cut the eggs into my hand right above the bowl since the eggs are on the soft-boiled side of cooking and I like any liquid yolk to combine with my dressing. Stir to combine.
Pour 3/4 of the dressing into the salad bowl and toss well. Portion the dressed salad onto four plates and drizzle each one with some of the remaining eggy dressing.
#vegetablesandsalads #vegetarian (if you are an ovo-lacto vegetarian)
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