The Cheat: Salad Day
By SAM SIFTON

“One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work.” This was William Faulkner talking, 1956, an interview with Jean Stein for The Paris Review. He was reminiscing about his early days living in New Orleans and working, he said, as little as possible. Faulkner was wistful about it. He’d have preferred to do other things than paint houses or write during his waking hours. It was unfortunate, he said, that “you can’t eat eight hours a day.”

You can’t? I am the restaurant critic of The New York Times. I eat out six or seven nights a week. I eat in restaurants for lunch. I eat in restaurants for breakfast. In between restaurant meals, I test recipes and eat the results. You add it all up, the numbers start getting big.

I’ve had double lunches in a day, double dinners. I’ve had days that began with lard-fried doughnuts and ended with torchons of foie gras followed by steak, with double-cooked pork and slick dumplings in chili oil in the middle for lunch. There were tastings of ham and oysters as snackish reporting stops along the way. There were failed stews and epic pasta tastings. There were tasting menus: 3 courses, 8, 16. I’ve taken wine and beer and coffee with those meals, had my just desserts, stared down glasses of grappa, amaro, Armagnac, whiskey.

And here is, truly, one of the saddest things: Eating like that is spectacularly unhealthful. Being a professional eater is complicated, for both the body and the mind. First, you take in a lot of calories. Add to that the fact that restaurant food has more fat in it than home-cooked. It has more salt. More sugar. This is why we like restaurants. And once you begin to eat restaurant food all the time, it’s all you ever want.

In a study released at the end of March, the Scripps Research Institute in Florida reported that a diet of high-fat, high-sugar food led a group of rats to pursue obesity with passion. Offering the rats healthful food in place of the sweet and fatty stuff led only to hunger strikes.

The scientists studied the fat rats’ brains. They looked like a cocaine abuser’s: the animals were fiends, addicted to the core. Anyone who has eaten the deep-fried lamb scrumpets at April Bloomfield’s Breslin restaurant in the Ace Hotel in Manhattan knows just where this is going. I thought about stealing a car stereo once, just to finance another order. We’re all just rats in a maze.

But I fight. I run to the gym and burn calories, sometimes on the orders of a trainer, sometimes on the orders of my own fear. I do this three or four times a week, sometimes more often. Then I run home to get ready for lunch. I tell myself I’m not consuming the processed fast-food meals the rats ate. I’m just eating a lot. I’m just running a lot.

The reasons I do the latter in order to continue the former are about my health, of course. But they are as much about professionalism. No one wants a restaurant critic who isn’t hungry when he sits down at the table, who is still feeling the effects of the Bresse chicken from lunch when he takes in the fried chicken at dinner. (That was a difficult day.) The best restaurants surprise and delight. A restaurant critic ought to be open to both possibilities. He should not feel sluggish, logy, fat.

So I walk everywhere, in good weather and bad. I ride a bicycle to the store to buy supplies rather than drive there while eating a roll and drinking a sweet coffee. I take the stairs when I can.

And on days off, I make salads and pretend they’re good for me. This is my dietary tic. I make salads because salads sound healthful. Of course my salads are not very healthful at all. They’re just good.

Today’s recipes are for vinaigrettes, Parisian salad clothes shipped to American shores. They are all based on a simple formula that uses roughly three parts oil to one part acid, a rule that achieves balance between the vivid sparkle of vinegar or lemon juice and the slick heaviness of olive oil. You can adjust for taste from there, adding a splash of oil if the dressing tastes too acidic, or a splash of acid if it’s overwhelmed.

Dressing advice: Whisk a lot. Start with vinegar and the flavors you’re adding to it: diced shallots, say, or garlic. If there is to be a cheese on the salad, I might add a pinch or two to the dressing early on, to help distribute its flavor. Whisk it around for a while.

And then continue to whisk, especially as you add the oil. The best vinaigrettes are emulsified — that is, they are smooth and at least temporarily stable, the disparate ingredients suspended among one another. (The addition to your dressing of already emulsified mixtures — maybe mustard or a dollop of mayonnaise — can help in this regard.)

Then assemble your work. I’ll leave the choice of greens mostly to you, but a sweet Boston or bibb for the basic, lemony version might be nice, and some frisée or romaine works for the heartier versions. Wash them, dry them carefully and place them in the largest bowl you have that’s not the serving bowl. Whisk your dressing again to keep it emulsified and add it to the bowl, along with any garnishes you desire: crumbled bacon, croutons toasted in bacon fat, a handful of grated cheese (you’re on a health kick!). Then gently toss the salad with your hands, evenly distributing both dressing and garnishes, and place it in a serving bowl or onto individual plates.

Whatever the dressing, I serve the resulting meal with a baguette and some salted butter. And as long as we’re sharing, often a roast chicken too. Swiping bread through a small puddle of melted chicken fat and salad dressing, after all, is one of life’s great pleasures. I don’t suppose it makes for particularly healthful eating, but that’s O.K. That’s what exercise is for — hunger is any salad’s final and most important ingredient.

Elsewhere in that Paris Review interview, Faulkner said of novelists, “I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.” When it comes to eating wonderfully, if not well, I think that’s the whole story right there.

RECIPES

Basic Sunday-Salad Dressing
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon red-wine vinegar

1 shallot, minced

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, shallot and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until the dressing emulsifies. Add salt and pepper to taste. Whisk again before dressing salad. Serves 4.

Slightly Creamier Sunday-Salad Dressing
2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar

1 teaspoon mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 shallot, minced

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Combine the vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard and shallot in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until the dressing emulsifies. Season to taste. Whisk again before dressing salad. Serves 4.

Italianate Sunday-Salad Dressing
1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons good-quality balsamic vinegar

1 clove garlic, minced

Scant handful basil leaves, chopped

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Combine the lemon juice, vinegar and garlic in a small bowl. Add the basil and stir to combine. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until the dressing emulsifies. Add the cheese and whisk again. Season to taste. Whisk again before dressing salad. Serves 4.

Big Country Salad
1/4 pound slab bacon, cut into 1-inch-long lardons

1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup good-quality blue cheese, crumbled

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 head romaine lettuce.

1. Fry the bacon over medium heat until almost crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Reserve a splash of bacon fat.

2. Return bacon pan to heat and add the bread crumbs, tossing until just golden. Remove from pan and reserve.

3. Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, garlic and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil and reserved bacon fat until dressing emulsifies. Add a tablespoon of blue cheese and whisk again. Season to taste.

4. Roughly chop the lettuce and put in a salad bowl. Add bread crumbs and remaining cheese, then the dressing. Toss to mix. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

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