I had come from Alaska to San Francisco.
I had gotten a job writing about food at the San Francisco Chronicle.
I was really developing my palette and was learning about California cuisine and all
its glory and the Chez Panisse Goat Cheese Salad was a big part of that.
The salad seems really simple.
It's a plate of greens, a little vinaigrette, some goat cheese, whatever, but it's the ingredients
that really make it something special.
It's lettuces that were just picked this morning from farms that the chefs go to and know what's
going into the earth and it does make a difference in the quality of the greens.
"These lettuces come from our farm in Glen Ellen, Canard farm.
He grows pretty much all of our salad greens and herbs for us.
There's some oak leaf, lola rosa, red oak.
This is chervil, a really beautiful soft herb that has a slightly anisey flavor."
This salad was started in 1980; at that point America was eating mostly iceberg lettuce.
The idea that you had this kind of texture and flavor and care for the lettuces was a
phenomenal revelation.
"This goat cheese, it's from Petaluma, from Soyoung Scanlan's Andante Dairy."
You have to realize that when this salad started we didn't have any goat cheese in this country.
This soft, slightly tangy cheese from goats was really the big news.
So anytime you see goat cheese on a salad or on a menu, you have this salad to thank.
"I'm going to marinate it with some herbs: flowering thyme, summer savory, parsley.
That smells so good.
With a nice Tuscan olive oil, I'll let this cheese just kind of marinate while I make
a vinaigrette.
Mortar and pestle is essential.
We use bulb garlic but in the spring the best garlic is this spring garlic that hasn't quite
formed a head yet.
It's just starting to bulb out at the bottom but when it's like this you can use the whole
stalk, just like a leak.
Really helpful to have a little bit of salt, the salt really helps it break down and it's
just practically like a paste.
And then I'm going to make the vinaigrette right in the mortar.
I like a little bit of mustard, it's give the dressing just a little body.
Red wine vinegar, this one is from Italy also but we do make our own red wine vinegar from
the ends of bottles of wine but we use a lot of vinegar so we kind of ran out.
I like to add just a little of this Spinelli vinegar that's made from a sweet French wine.
I'm going to sprinkle in a little bit of pepper and then I'm just going to stir in some good
olive oil.
How much I put in of all the ingredients, I just go by taste.
I think it needs just a tiny bit more vinegar and that's it.
"We save all our old bread and we find lots of uses for it and breadcrumbs is one of them.
You don't want a heavy coating but you want an even layer of crumbs on there so you get
that crunch.
This is more or less a fancy toaster oven.
Close it up and let those warm up.
You want it to be warmed through and just sort of starting to melt.
Yeah, seems just right."
It is truly the greens.
It's about showcasing these impeccable salad greens and enhancing them with the dressing,
not killing them with the dressing and then you have the creaminess of the cheese.
It's almost custardy and it's warm.
I think it's very easy to say, "Oh, Chez Panisse, it's a pile of beans.
It's some salad," but I will tell you it's been well sourced.
It tastes delicious.
It's presented simply and you eat the dish and you're satisfied and I think that is really
what something that's perfect is really all about.