REE DRUMMOND, New York Times best-selling author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks Irvin Lin has most definitely outdone himself. My eyes kept getting wider and wider as I turned every page-both the flavor combinations and the photos are out of this world. “My goodness, this cookbook! It’s filled to the brim with recipes for the most splendidly beautiful cakes, cookies, breads, and tarts I think I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t just paint the lily he bejewels and shellacs it, too." Lin, a graphic designer in San Francisco who writes the food blog Eat the Love, takes risks in nearly every one of the 150 elaborate recipes in his book. My Midwest roots were showing through, but my partner didn’t mind. But in a recent fit of nostalgia and Midwest American fare (I was making ribs for dinner – recipe to come) I thought ahead enough to buy some Iceberg at the store. Usually I’m too distracted by the little gem lettuce or the mixed spring greens at my local grocery store to think about buying Iceberg. That said, I do rarely make a wedge salad at home. Of course, everyone knows you can make it pretty easily at home, but that didn’t stop everyone from ordering them anyway. Though it went away for awhile in the 90s (when everyone seemed obsessed with miso glazed cod and wasabi mashed potatoes), it came back with a vengeance a few years ago at fine dining restaurants that decided that wedge salads were the perfect comfort food with a low overhead that they could charge a premium for. Growing up in the Midwest, Iceberg was the default lettuce and though my palate has expanded beyond the watery crunchy green leaves, I still find myself tempted to order it when I see it on a menu. Wedge salads have always held a soft spot in my heart. After all, I’d rather eat something that tastes great but isn’t so picture-perfect than eat three single leaves of lettuce on a plate and want for more. More is often more for me and so I sprinkled the salad with even more bacon and thought to myself, oh well, good thing he’s not around to judge. But as I’ve stated before when I made my bialys, I’m a maximalists when it comes to food. He taught a cooking class I took a few months ago at a culinary school and he was pretty critical on people’s plating, something I did appreciate as that’s really the only way you can learn. He would probably shake his head a little, and then tell me that I was crowding the plate, putting too much on the salad. “I’d probably give that plate a B or B+ if I had to judge…” was how he would say it, looking at me as I overloaded the iceberg lettuce with chopped tomatoes, blue cheese chunks, thick bacon bits, shavings of shallots, a sprinkling of chopped parsley, not to mention the healthy dollop of blue cheese dressing. I can hear his voice in my head as I plated the iceberg wedge salad and took a look at it. This classic wedge salad recipe is an easy crowd-pleasing dish that comes together fast and easy! ( Jump directly to the recipe.)
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