Frisée aux Lardons

Fancy name for a bacon and poached egg salad, no? Frankly, it's one of my favorite dinners, a go-to treat with a glass of red wine. I'll admit this: I'm not one for an egg at breakfast. I don't know: an egg is probably too serious. Maybe if I were milking cows. . . . But that's not going to happen. (As Bruce would say, "Not with that attitude.")

So here's our twosome serving of this French salad:

Start out with two heads of frisée, a type of curly endive that has spidery fronds at the ends of its pale green stems. Believe it or not, we can find it at the Stop-N-Shop in Winsted, so it must be ubiquitous. That said, this time of year, it's often green right to the tips. Better frisée is white at the base, shading into a pale green at its tips. But you take it as you find it, no?

Tear off the root end, wash the surprisingly resilient leaves for grit, then tear them into bite-sized bits. No cutting needed. Torn lettuce makes the best salads because a knife tends to juice the water-doped cells. Then put the frisée into a big bowl.

Now for the fun part. Cube 6 ounces slab bacon. Not sliced, breakfast bacon, but a slab chunk from the meat case at the supermarket. Look for a hunk with lots of meat, not much fat. (No jokes right here, please.) Then cut it into little rectangles about 1 inch long, 1/2 inch wide, and 1/2 inch thick. (Although there's no reason to get fussy with the knife technique. Any dice will do.) Put them in a skillet over medium heat and cook, stirring often, until tender.

A lot of people add oil to the skillet. But why? The bacon's not shy with its grease. It'll give off lots--there's just no need to add any extra. Call it a bid for health when you're frying bacon.

Don't be shy--get the bacon good and crisp. Then use a slotted spoon to transfer it to the bowl with the frisée, leaving the rendered grease in the skillet. You can drain some fat from the skillet (why??) but you definitely need 2 tablespoons rendered grease to make a good dressing.

Add 2 minced medium shallots to the skillet over medium heat and cook in the fat until sizzling and soft, about 1 minute. Minced--that is, tiny little bits. You want them almost to melt.

Stir in 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar and bring to a simmer, almost immediately, quickly scraping up any browned bits on the skillet's bottom.

OK, the vinegar's at a little simmer--and here's where we get a little, um, nontraditional. We stir in 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. In truth, many traditional versions of this salad stop with the vinegar, but we find that the spike of complex flavoring helps cut the overwhelming whomp of all that rendered bacon fat. (Did I just write that? I vow here and now never to say anything bad about bacon again. Hail, Bacon Overlord!)

Simmer the dressing until it becomes a slightly wet but thickened glaze. Then pour it right on top of the greens and bacon in the bowl. Toss well and divide between two plates.

Note: no salt. The bacon's salty enough. If you enjoy bouts of hypertension, have some extra to pass at the table.

Now the poached eggs. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Meanwhile, crack two eggs into two ramekins or cups. When the water is boiling, turn off the heat and wait for the water to still a bit. Gently slide the eggs into the saucepan, one on each side. And set the saucepan aside. Period. Listen, people go through all sorts of fandango to get a good poached egg: a simmer at six bubbles a second, a little vinegar to the water, one eye crossed and the other closed. There's no trick. Just no boiling water. The eggs just need to set in the hot water. Anything above 150F will get you a set. And that's quite a bit off boiling. So set the pan aside for 4 minutes for soft poachies, six minutes for harder yolks. But you don't want to hard-cook the eggs, for bacon's sake. They need to gush into the salad when the yolks are broken.

And now a confession: we often get our eggs from a woman in town who has a flock of guinea fowl. (That's pintades for all your Francophiles.) The hens aren't laying big eggs right now because of the lack of daylight. So we actually used two eggs a piece for our salads the other night. But these were tiny eggs. Lilliputian. On normal days, we'd use one large egg apiece.

Gently fish the eggs out of the water with a slotted spoon, let each one drain a bit over the saucepan, then set them on top of the salads. Put out a crunchy baguette for tearing, pour the red wine (Coffaro Terre Melange, preferably) and get your butts to the table while the eggs are still warm.