Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
Believed to have originated in St. Louis in the 1960s, fresh spinach, crispy bacon and a tangy, warm dressing prepared tableside was the rage in 1970s fine dining.
When I was a very young man, I had a job as an assistant Maître d' Table at a white tablecloth restaurant in a swank hotel. It was the ‘70s and tableside cooking was all the rage. I learned how to make a number of things tableside to help out the waiters when they were getting slammed; things like Caesar's Salad, Strawberries Romanov, Bananas Foster, Steak Diane and Wilted Spinach Salad.
Years went by and one winter day, I had a couple of bags of fresh, pre-washed spinach lying around the refrigerator and decided to take a crack at recreating that wonderful recipe. To the best of my recollection, this version of the classic tastes pretty close.
You don't see many restaurants that feature tableside cooking anymore. In fact, the only one I know of is Le Continental in Quebec City, and they've specialized in this kind of service since the 1960s. The restaurant was built for it. Table-side cooking requires more time and intensive training, especially if you're going to flambé anything, which means to pour alcohol into the pan while the grease is hot. It catches the dish on fire for a few moments until the alcohol burns off. It's showy, but is really pretty dangerous if you think about it. In fact, a fire at the Peanut Butter & Jelly Restaurant in New York City in 1989 because of a tableside flambé demonstration all but killed it as an industry practice.
Then, too, you have to have room to roll your gueridon in-between dining tables. A gueridon is that little rolling table that waiters push around the restaurant. More room between tables means fewer tables in the dining room; fewer tables and longer dinner times mean less turnover of customers and that means less revenue. Less revenue means less profit, and so it goes.
Plus, I'm sure that doing any open-air cooking anymore is eaten up with local health and fire code issues and if you intend to flambé anything, there are probably a whole litany of regulations if it is allowed at all. Then there's the heightened liability and the cost of insurance that follows.
{{Sigh}} The world was a much simpler place fifty years ago.
Wilted Spionach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
Ingredients
- 2-16 oz packages pre-washed baby spinach
- 8 large button mushrooms, sliced
- Kitchen Tapestry recipe for Wilted Spinach Salad Dressing
Instructions
- Place the baby spinach and sliced mushrooms in a mixing bowl and toss to combine. Allow to sit at room temperature for an hour before completing the recipe.
- Make the Kitchen Tapestry recipe for Wilted Spinach Salad Dressing.
- Pour the dressing over the spinach leaves in a large bowl and toss gently, letting the leaves wilt slightly. Serve immediately.
Salad Dressing Repository - Wilted Spinach Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb bacon (about 8 rashers), sliced into lardons
- 1 small shallot, finely minced
- 1 hard boiled egg, yolks removed and whites finely diced
- 1 tbsp honey or table sugar
- 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 1 heaping tbsp whole grain mustard (like Maille Whole Grain Mustard)
- 7-8 grinds freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Cook the bacon until very crisp and drain on paper towels. Pour off excess grease, but retain two tablespoons.
- Over medium heat, sauté the shallots until translucent. Add the mustard, pepper and honey until blended into the shallots.
- Deglaze the pan with the white wine, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan and let it sizzle a moment.
- Stir in the apple cider vinegar, then bring the dressing to a simmer. Allow to reduce slightly.
- Blend in the hard boiled egg yolks with a whisk and thicken the mixture. Take the dressing off the heat and allow it to cool slightly.
- Add the diced hard boiled egg whites and the crispy bacon bits to the dressing just before serving.
- Pour the dressing over chilled spinach leaves with sliced mushrooms in a large bowl and toss gently, letting the leaves wilt slightly. Serve immediately.
