Salads needn’t be complex or involve hundreds of finely chopped ingredients to be flavoursome. Besides the vinaigrette, this dish contains just four ingredients: smoked-bacon, lettuce, blue-cheese and avocado. If you’re worried that its simplicity might detract from its flavour; don’t be. It’s delicious! Take my word for it.

I mainly prepare this recipe as a starter. But because it’s so quick and easy, it also makes a wonderful lunch dish for when time is tight. My recommendation is to make a large batch of dressing, from which you just serve a good glug every time you’re preparing a salad. A bottle of home-made vinaigrette will keep for months and is infinitely better than anything you can buy. Again, take my word for it!

Place rashers of smoked streaky bacon onto a baking sheet and oven until brown and crisp. I should say circa 15 minutes, but this very much depends on your oven. Whilst this is cooking, make your vinaigrette.

Crush a small clove of chilli into a mixing-bowl, then add a dessert-spoon full of Dijon mustard. Judging the quantities roughly by eye, add the same volume of lemon-juice as you see mustard in the bowl, then grind in pepper and a good crunch of sea-salt. Now sprinkle in a tablespoon of chopped parsley. Judging by eye again, pour in white-wine vinegar until you have the same quantity of vinegar to all other ingredients. Place the bowl onto a damp tea-towel to stop it moving, then whisk in sunflower-oil, drizzling this in slowly so that the dressing doesn’t separate. If it does, then no great shakes; it’s only visual appeal that’s compromised, not taste. Once you have circa 10 times your pre-oil volume of dressing, stop and have a quick taste on the tip of a spoon. It should be pleasingly acidic, but not ‘wincingly’ so. If too strong, simply continue to whisk in oil until you’re happy with it!

Once done, remove the bacon from the oven to cool.

Scatter salad-leaves into your serving-dish, then place your de-stoned avocado on top. The best way to prepare avocado is to halve it lengthways then hit the stone with the blade of your knife. A quick twist anticlockwise will instantly remove it, enabling you to simply scrape the avocado out of its skin with a soup-spoon.

Dice your blue-cheese and strew this over the avocado and lettuce. Slice your bacon into inch-length-strips and toss these over the other ingredients. Finely pour a generous glug of vinaigrette all over the dish and finish with a grind of pepper.

This dish is so unbelievably simple yet tastes fantastic. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Once you’ve had a go, be sure to let me know how you got on.

Thanks for reading and bon ap!

Adam.