A Salad of Hot Bacon, Lettuce, and Peas

Name: A Salad of Hot Bacon, Lettuce, and Peas
Yield: enough for 4
Ingredients: smoked bacon – 8 slices; a little oil; white bread – 5 ounces (150g); a large, soft-leaved lettuce; a small bulb of fennel; shelled peas – 1 cup (150g); Dijon mustard – a teaspoon; red wine vinegar – a tablespoon; olive oil – 4 tablespoons

December 14, 2011

Anyone who has shelled a bag of peas will know how good they are raw. Far too little is made of their scrunchy sweetness, and I put forward the pod-fresh raw pea as an idea to throw into salads of pale yellow butterhead lettuce, cracked wheat, or dishes of cooked fava beans. They work in their uncooked state only when very young and small. Old peas are mealy and sour. One rainy lunchtime in June, I put them into a simple salad of Peter Rabbit lettuce, crisply cooked smoked bacon, and hand-torn ciabatta. The result—restrained, refreshing, and somehow quintessentially English.

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