Dry your lettuce!

Salad dressing will not stick to wet lettuce. So after washing, lay the leaves down on a large light towel and gently roll it up. Then place the rolled up lettuce in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Then use as needed.

Salad oil

The French don’t use olive oil for their dressings but instead peanut oil. The thinking is that if you use a heavy oil it will coat your palate and mask the delicateness of the cuisine.

Mimosa as a salad topper

Take 1 hard boiled egg yolk and press it through a sieve with the back of a spoon. Toss with some chopped herbs. Then sprinkle over your salad.

The 3 conditions of egg yolks

When making mayonnaise from scratch, the yolks will accept the oil under these 3 conditions:

• Before adding the oil, you must beat the egg yolks till they are thick and sticky
• When you start adding the oil you do it by adding drop by drop by drop
• Each yolk will hold a maximum of 3/4 cup of oil.

Evenly coating

If your salad contains lots of add-ins and you don’t want them to all fall to the bottom of the bowl when you toss the salad. Try individually tossing each add-in with dressing in a small bowl before adding to greens that have already been tossed with dressing.

Lessons from Julia is a weekly series where I post what I am learning from watching episodes of The French Chef with Julia Child starting at season 1, episode 1.