pear greens gorgonzola cheese salad

There also comes a time in a man's life when he must learn to nick a recipe from a restaurant. The restaurant in question is Quinn's Pub, and the item, no longer on the menu, was a basic -- but tasty -- pear and greens salad. She liked it, I aim to please, I aimed to pull it together.

a bosca pear

a bag of organic herb salad from Trader Joe's

a container of Amish gorgonzola cheese crumbles

good balsamic vinegar (optional)

Open the bag of salad greens and arrange it on the plate. Run the pear through a mandoline, this time creating the thinnest possible slices, and arrange them around the plate in a circle. Then grab a fistful of the gorgonzola and sprinkle it around. Optionally, drizzle balsamic vinegar. (Because dammit, I like a good balsamic vinegar, even on my steak.)

Eat the salad.

Forgive the meticulously imprecise directions -- all quantities are "to my bloody heart's desire." Fortunately, most salads are resilient to these kinds of measurements.

arugula asian pear jicama salad

There comes a time in a man's life when he must make a salad that goes beyond taking a package of prewashed greens, plopping it on a plate, pouring a cup of Thousand Island dressing, and calling it good -- and yet without the aid of recipes from books and magazines and websites and the like.

I had a brilliant idea:

1 medium jicama

1 asian pear

1 bag of prewashed arugula

good balsamic vinegar

Open the bag of prewashed arugula and plate it in a presentable fashion. Peel the jicama. Run it through a mandoline to create straw; do the same to asian pear (which i did not bother to peel). Toss the jicama and pear together, and place on top of the arugula. Drizzle balsamic vinegar. (Cook's Illustrated had given O&Co's Premium Balsamic Vinegar a good rating, and so that's what I used.)

Eat the salad.

It was good.