Gourmet salad
A tribute to Monsieur Michel Guérard, our master
This marvellous salad, copied millions of times and served all over the world under different names: it is the salad served in Michel Guérard’s first restaurant, Le Pot-au-feu in Asnières, a salad of fresh green beans with shavings of foie gras, but not only!
From the 1980s, nouvelle cuisine invaded restaurant menus, and al dente green beans and pink fish still on the bone tantalised the gourmet.
The gourmet salad is something else entirely! Respect!
A fine handful of local green beans, topped and tailed in your own way, a large volume of water, a small pinch of coarse salt; plunge the beans in for 15 min from the first simmer, check that the cooking is to your liking and plunge them into iced water to stop the cooking. That takes care of the green beans.
Now you must embellish your salad with green asparagus tips (keep the stalks to make the famous velouté). Then you will need to prepare the vinaigrette, based on the two pillar oils of the kitchen, olive and groundnut, press a lemon or a grapefruit, add sherry vinegar and a few tarragon leaves and a little chervil.
Use this vinaigrette to lightly coat each ingredient on the plate, a few rocket leaves and a little finely chopped shallot, a pretty bunch of green beans with 4 or 5 asparagus tips. And it is at this point that you delicately cut shavings of foie gras, either from your terrine or from raw liver, all with a turn of the pepper mill and a little coarse salt. Serve on a plate, of course.
If you have any green beans left over, cook them the old-fashioned way in a frying pan with a knob of butter and fresh parsley, another seasonal delight.
And please, stop buying green beans from Kenya.
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