I’m not a fresh tomato lover. Unless it’s summer and unless the tomatoes are so red they’ve earned the right to be called ‘tomato’. Luckily, the cherry tomatoes I had in the refrigerator were both. So today’s lunch salad was

• Cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• Parsley, rinsed and snipped
• Red onion, sliced
• Zfatit cheese, crumbled
• Walnuts, broken
• Olive Oil, drizzled
• Red wine vinegar, splashed

Proportions? Feh, eyeball it.

Sorry there’s no picture.. I finished it before I finished the post.

In honor of the return of iceberg lettuce, I came up with a salad dressing that would add a bite to counterbalance the cool crispness of the lettuce.

Then I added horseradish.

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I have discussed ingredient substitutions in classes, and I will probably go on mentioning them here in my blog. They’re not cheating, they don’t fundamentally detract from the recipe and they’re not wrong. Purists who click their tongues are nothing but elitist food snobs who can’t think in the kitchen the way a chef thinks. And anyone who disagrees with me so far should remember that many of the original, classic recipes bear no resemblance to their modern day counterparts.

Substitutions should redefine a dish, not sabotage it. Here’s a classic example. A la Florentine is a well-known preparation of with spinach and typically Mornay sauce. Whether your protein is chicken, mullet, pork or eggs, the preparation remains the same.

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