arugula salad with lentils

Fresh baby arugula and baby spinach combined with apple and cucumber and with seared asparagus. Topped with goat cheese and green onion and cooked lentils. 

In which breathtaking salad-assemblage eclat is demonstrated to produce a fresh lunch so profoundly brilliant that grown chefs weep. They weep with joy that such things are possible, and they weep in dismay that their own talents fall short. 

Man, oh Man, this salad is delicious. I am squirming inside with irrepressible childlike delight. Too bad this salad will never be duplicated precisely due to it's improvisation. Still, one can come close, in fact if one were interested they could make a fortune, a FORTUNE!, I tell you. Here, have it. It's yours. 

The salad is inspired by these attractive bins of lentils seen in the bulk section at Whole Foods. I saw them before but dismissed them as silly. But then they caught my eye again and I thought, "Well, aren't you purdy little things?" (A declarative formed as interrogative with an assumed Western thinky-thought accent. In these small ways I amuse myself.) I bought a big pile of them so you will see them again. The orange lentils are next to the yellow lentils which are cute too, but I used those already. Yellow is brighter, but orange is more unusual. It was a tough call. Orange lentils or yellow lentils. I ignored the green lentils and the French lentils and stood there before the two bins of brightly colored lentils arrested in weighing the matter. Shoppers passing through considered me an idiot. I could read their minds. 

If you steam asparagus then you end up with limp green sticks. Those are no fun. If you sear asparagus all around then you end up with shriveled diminished limp sticks. Those are no fun either. Solution: Sear the spears, or spear portions on one side only to produce a single strip of sear. Halt the searing action by splashing a small amount of water into the hot pan and slam on a lid so that the spears finish cooking by steam.  This can be done in reverse. Butter is 20% water. You can heat a pan, toss in a pat of butter so that it sizzles immediately, follow with asparagus spears, quickly clamp on a tight lid, shake the pan to create a single layer of asparagus spears inside the covered pan. Now you are cooking blindly. The water contained in the butter will steam the asparagus, the fat in the butter will help sear the spears. Do not touch the pan until you intuit the spears are done. See? Forward or backward with the water, either way, it doesn't matter. 

It is the dressing that makes these vegetables irresistable. You cannot buy any dressing so extraordinary. You must make it. Ordinarily for a thing like this I would start off with soy sauce and have that count for the salt. But soy sauce is dark and it produces a darkly colored dressing. I wanted to avoid that today so I eliminated the soy sauce. Fish sauce is also dark, but much less of it is used. Fish sauce will also contribute a salty sensation. So then, in amounts to suit yourself:

Dressing

*  Sake. Japanese rice wine. In place of vinegar. It is a harsh substance that must be moderated with something sweet.

*  Sweet mirin. If not mirin then honey, If not honey then sugar. If not sugar then fruit preserves. If not fruit preserves then ... oh, you get the idea, something sweet to knock the edge off that sake.

*  Fish sauce. Fermented anchovy, that, like anchovies themselves will impart salt flavor and satisfying umami then disappear entirely into the background. Used sparingly there can be no objections and yet diners will wonder, "What manner of sorcery is this that causes a dancing party on the surface of my tongue?" 

*  Freshly grated ginger and freshly grated garlic together in equal amounts. 

*  Pepper, but no salt.