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| behold, my latest food obsession |
Of all my 33 years on this earth, I have never ordered a wedge salad. I've seen it on food shows, ordered next to me at restaurants, and glanced over it in cookbooks, but never have I ever been tempted to try the dish. A lonely chunk of lettuce on a plate with some white sauce and bacon sprinkled over it? Unappealing. But oh, how I was wrong to judge so quickly.
I am not a salad guy, as in I do not crave salads, especially with lettuce. Papaya salad, sure, spicy cucumber salad, totally. But lettuce never held any weight for me. It probably has something to do with my mother, who is Chinese, and did not grow up eating 'salad' as a concept, so we rarely had it. She was the cook and if we ever had salad growing up in France, it was always romaine, rocket, chicory, but never, EVER, iceberg lettuce. Empty food, my mother called it, no nutritional value, I wouldn't even feed it to the turtles (we had 13 ornate box turtles living on our lanai). I echoed this dogma my whole life. Until now.
Here's the thing about iceberg lettuce: what it lacks in nutrition, it delivers on mouthfeel and excitement. We know it's an excellent side kick; Add it shredded to any sandwich and even people who do not love sandwiches, like me, are much more inclined to partake. It packs needed volume and moisture to an otherwise crusty and dry bite. Served as the star however, as a wedge salad, it becomes a beacon and a playground, inviting all the other flavors and textures to come frolic. And I was blind to this fact until I tried making it myself.
Despite it being an ex's go-to app, the dish never lingered longer in my mind than it took just hearing its name spoken out loud. As some things go in the world, I had not spared this dish a single thought until it somehow crept in and became devastatingly all-consuming; Within the span of a few days, I saw wedge salad served on an episode of Below Deck, and then the stranger sitting next to me at Gage & Tollner was eating it while we argued about politics, and then I was at the store buying groceries and lo, what was on sale? Iceberg lettuce.
I bit.
After I had assembled all the components, chopped the kumato tomatoes, hardboiled and peeled the eggs, toasted the croutons, and seared the (mushroom) bacon, I scattered each ingredient over the exposed layers of the lettuce, making sure every peridot fold received a generous drizzle of homemade blue cheese dressing. The whole process felt vaguely erotic. Cutting into the wedge with a steak knife, the satisfying CRUNCH it made, tickled the sensory part of my brain awake. I felt powerful. Was this how steak eaters felt cutting into a NY strip??
Then came the first bite: delicate and refreshing sheafs of lettuce giving way to the tang of blue cheese dressing, the rice vinegar I added giving it the necessary bite to counter fatty indulgence. The next bite: the sweet and watery tomato cleansing the palate, CRUNCH, the garlicky crouton invigorating it, CRUNCH, the pillowy egg soothing it, CRUNCH, the umami mushroom bacon raising it up and taking it home. Then the next bite, and the next, and the next... Until I found myself staring at an empty plate, standing over the kitchen counter, wiping dressing from my chin.
I had been fully, wholly in the moment of eating- no, devouring. A fugue state where not one thought existed outside of the tastes and textures of that wedge salad. I had been completely overcome and felt sick because there wasn't any left. Why did the experience have to end? Why couldn't I CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH into oblivion?? Next time I was at the store I beelined to the veggies, bought another head of iceberg lettuce and rushed home. I assembled the usual suspects, this time adding kewpie mayo to the dressing, and then promptly left the world of earthly worries: recent arguments with loved ones, the political hellscape, my chronic back pain...
Guys, I found my drug of choice, and it's wedge salad.
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| Please wedge salad, take me away. |