Culinary Guides

This apple and bacon salad comes together fast and always disappears. Crisp green oak leaf lettuce is tossed with sweet apple strips, salty bacon, and toasted hazelnuts in a bright orange and apple vinegar dressing. Take it to a potluck and people will ask for the recipe.

Ingredients

• 60 g bacon cubes
• 1 red-skinned apple
• 1 organic lemon
• 1 head green oak leaf lettuce
• 1 organic orange
• 2 tbsp hazelnuts
• 2 tbsp apple vinegar
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Pinch of pepper

Directions

1. In a frying pan, slowly fry the bacon cubes over medium heat with no added fat until crisp and golden. Drain on paper towels.
2. Wash the apple and cut it into thin strips, skin on. Juice the lemon and toss the apple strips in it to keep them from browning and add a little zip.
3. Wash and dry the oak leaf lettuce, tear it into bite-sized pieces, and place it in a large bowl.
4. Add the lemon-tossed apple and the crisp bacon to the lettuce and toss gently to combine.
5. For the dressing, zest the orange, taking only the colorful outer layer. Finely chop the hazelnuts and whisk them with the orange zest, apple vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
6. Drizzle the dressing over the salad, toss gently to coat, and serve right away.

Smoked bacon or pancetta adds another layer of flavor, and toasting the hazelnuts briefly before chopping deepens their taste. Granny Smith or Honeycrisp apples both work well.

Grower's tip: Green oak leaf is a loose-leaf lettuce you harvest a few leaves at a time. Snip the outer leaves and the plant keeps producing for weeks; it is slow to bolt, but the leaves are sweetest and most tender picked young.

Grow the greens for this salad yourself. A bed of oak leaf and other loose-leaf lettuce gives you weeks of cut-and-come-again leaves.