A great salad you can make at home any time of the year!
This is a salad I used to make fairly often many years ago when we had the terrific aged Catalan goat cheese, Garrotxa, on hand regularly. And since, as I wrote last week, Garrotxa is back, I was reminded to make the salad again too. It remains just as terrifically tasty as I remember it!
The Garrotxa is a semi-firm, gently aged Catalan cheese that essentially went extinct for a century or so before being brought back in 1981, the year before we opened the Deli. It’s got a great complex flavor that seems to appeal to aficionados and newcomers to artisan cheese at the same time.
For the salad, lay down a bed of local greens—arugula, in-season lettuces, etc. Remove the rind from a wedge of the cheese, and then cut it into ⅛ to ¼-inch thick slices. Lay the cheese slices over the greens. Pop open a jar of Piquillo peppers—the amazing, roasted over beechwood, hand-peeled peppers that are so typical of the Spanish Basque Country. Coarse chop a few of the peppers and then sprinkle them over the cheese.
While you’re doing that, lightly toast some good hazelnuts. I love the ones we get from the Piemonte region of Italy. Coarsely chop the nuts and sprinkle over the salad.
Arrange slices of a ripe avocado around the edges of the plate. The white of the cheese, the red of the peppers, the green of the avocado, and the light brown of the hazelnuts make a beautiful color palette!
Sprinkle on a bit of a good sea salt, some freshly ground black pepper, and a few teaspoons of vinegar—aged sherry vinegar is awesome, and the Balsamela above would be wonderful too!
That’s it! Add a glass of wine if you like and some great bread from the Bakehouse, and you’ve got a world-class meal in a matter of minutes!
