Bitter salad leaves, dressed with a sharp, mustardy vinaigrette, punctuated by a few rounds of flash-grilled chèvre-topped baguette. This is an almost failsafe option at French restaurants. The quality of the chèvre can vary, the crispness and acidity of the salad might waver, a few redundant walnuts may be sprinkled on top (and find their match in walnut oil in the vinaigrette) but whatever happens, a salade au chèvre chaud – in France – will rarely disappoint. Most other countries have different ideas about goat’s cheese to the French, raw milk and fat content being the contentious issues, and hence it is a less reliable selection outside l’Héxagone.
I ate this salad chez Thoumieux, a restaurant in the 7th arrondissement that has been dishing up worthwhile far since 1928. This was billed cabecous en salade, cabecous being the cheese in question. Here, the conventional proportion of cheese to salad is tilted distinctly in favour of the cheese. I see no problem with this.
1 comment:
Hmmm. The cheese/salad ratio. This is an interesting question. Is there a golden number? Or does it depend on the cheese, the salad, the dressing, the time of day, the cycle of the moon? An acquaintance of mine once spent some time seeking the perfect (if such a thing there is)ratio of gin to tonic. Obviously, there are numerous variables to be considered in this instance (the gin, the tonic, lime, lemon, the first G&T...the nth G&T and so on). I'm not sure how thoroughly he investigated these.
I suspect that data needs to be gathered in this instance too.
Post a Comment