Baby grows up

Curly endive salad with bacon, croñtons and poached egg

(serves two)

There is always a poached egg starter on the menu at Langan's. This is the summer version and has been popular for many years. It is a classic French brasserie dish.

INGREDIENTS

4 eggs, free range

1 curly endive (frisée)

250g bacon(Langan's uses Suffolk sweet cure)

250g stale white bread, thick cut

For the dressing

1tbs French mustard

1tbs white wine vinegar

30ml olive oil

Salt

Pepper

METHOD

Make the vinaigrette by the mayonnaise method. Stir vinegar, seasoning and mustard together into a paste. Slowly add the oil drop by drop to achieve an emulsion. Then add oil slowly, whisking it in. Use more oil or more vinegar to obtain the taste you require.

Take all the green parts of the frisée off and discard them. Break up the yellow/white leaves into mouth-size pieces. Chill.

Cut the bacon into lardons and fry with a little extra olive oil. Keep warm.

Cut the bread into small, square croñtons and fry in the bacon fat adding more oil if you need it. Keep warm.

In a bowl season the yellow/white frisée leaves. Pile the frisée on to four plates.

Poach the eggs and refresh in advance or poach freshly as required. The eggs should still be soft. Turn out on to kitchen paper to absorb the excess water and then place on topof the lettuce. Put the bacon and croñtons on top and drizzle with dressing. Serve

THERE are few who regret the demise of the English garden lettuce, fewer still who have a fond memory of the iceberg. Salads and palates have changed. The days when a piece of cold salmon was served up on a summer's day, with a few dewy leaves of garden lettuce and a dollop of home-made mayonnaise, have been consigned to the memory banks.

Until recently, the exotic salad leaf has reigned supreme. There appears, however, to be a mood-swing among chefs.They are beginning to mourn for the days of old, when lettuce tasted of lettuce.

According to Danny Murphy of fruit and vegetable supplier Chefs Connection, the cos lettuce is today's big favourite. "Chefs are looking more and more for salad with crunch, a lettuce that can hold a dressing," he says.

But Martin Levy, of salad leaf specialist French Garden, based at New Covent Garden Market, says that baby red chard, pousse épinard, mizuna, red mustard, redina, tatsoi and Italian wild rocket are going from strength to strength in popularity and that the big loser is iceberg. He says: "The baby leaves are still popular and will continue to be, as they are now available all year round. The problem before was availability."

Paul Gayler, executive chef at the Lanesborough hotel in London, is not so sure. He says: "We're going back to basics. I find mizuna and red mustard too hot and pungent. I want a lettuce, not a salad leaf. They're fine for garnish, but cos, baby gem and even iceberg are preferable. A salad is about crunch and a leaf that can hold a dressing. Lollo is out."

This change in direction has a lot to do with the rise in popularity of the crunchy salad, such as Caesar salad. Bruce Sangster, executive chef at Lehman Brothers, agrees with Gayler: "Cos is a good lettuce. It has flavour and body. I use it to make a salad, as I would baby gem, where I use the whole leaf. I use smaller leaves for garnish and there is a difference between a salad garnish and a salad. Wild rocket is a great leaf, but you have to be very careful with it. I wouldn't use it in a proper salad. My favourite way to use it is iced on top of some hot seared scallops," he says.

Allister Bishop, executive chef at the Sheraton Belgravia hotel in London, also enjoys using baby leaves with scallops. He says:"I use baby leaves, but not as a main component of a dish. I use them as a garnish for colour and texture. I have a seared scallop dish on the menu at the moment, served with a baby fondant potato and a lemon and cracked pepper dressing. I use pousse épinard as a garnish."

The baby leaf has had a rapid rise to fame, adorning menus across the complete spectrum of catering, but according to David Crossland at French Garden, baby leaves are just that - babies. They are grown quickly and picked quickly - an immature plant with a 20-30 day cycle from sowing to harvest.

"The shorter a salad leaf is in the ground, the less time it has to develop its full flavour," he says. Baby leaves need to be small, as they won't be chopped. They need to be soft in texture, vibrant in colour and full of flavour - a contradiction in terms. If the leaves were left any longer, they would develop a more rounded flavour, but at the expense of toughness," he explains.

Gayler says: "Caesar salad is a classic example of a good salad. We sell it by the bucketload. It needs a robust leaf such as cos. It just wouldn't work with a baby leaf. I am now working with chicory and watercress, both of which are really underrated forms of salad."

Sangster agrees: "One of my most popular salads is an orange, watercress and chicory salad. It has sweetness, bitterness and crunch and it can hold a dressing."

So what is it that drives fashion in salad? Levy has a hunch that television is one of the big reasons for the rise in popularity of more unusual salad leaves. "Every time a television programme is shown,with the chef using wild rocket or baby red chard, we get big orders the next morning," he says. "It's the same with Caterer. Chefs are constantly watching each other."

Ken Whitehead, executive chef at Langan's Brasserie, says: "You've got to know what each individualcomponent of a salad tastes like. It's no good flinging in a bit of this or that, just because you feel like it.If something is bitter, you have to find something sweet to go with it. The mouth can only take so many tastes at once."

Popular salads include Caesar, made with a mixture of cos and iceberg, chicory with Roquefort and wilted rocket on top of grilled swordfish. "We use frisée, but only the white/yellow part. This can be expensive - we end up throwing much of it away. The classic frisée salad is curly endive with bacon, croñtons and poached egg [see left]." n