Bianco: Pizza, Pasta and Other Food I Like

When I make dressing, I set a damp kitchen towel on my counter and nestle the bowl I’m going to use into the towel, so that it doesn’t get crazy while I’m emulsifying the dressing. Stability!

PURSLANE AND CUCUMBER SALAD (#ulink_a9c98056-3df5-53e6-b148-b78d1befc049)

Back in the early ’90s, I was living in Santa Fe, working at the restaurant Babbo Ganzo. At the end of one summer, I was trying to think up a daily salad special. It was late in the season and I wasn’t feeling especially fresh with ideas. I figured I’d drive out to the farmers’ market and make a go of it. But Rocky, one of the kitchen crew, who had grown up in Sinaloa, Mexico, told me that there was tons of verdolaga growing between the sidewalk and the side of the building, poking through the cracks.

I had no idea what verdolaga was—turns out, it was purslane. But I’d never had purslane, or even known what it was. We picked a huge bag of it and Rocky told me how they prepared it back home. He shared his history with me, and my part was to be humble before that. We ended up making a simple purslane, cucumber, and red onion salad, dressed with a bit of lemon. Now purslane is one of my favorite greens; I love its sour lemony quality, its slipperiness. But back then, I had been ready to ignore the bounty that was right in front of me—and I think that’s true too often for all of us, not only in cooking but in life.