When I make salad for dinner, it tends to be a one-bowl affair: I toss greens, grains, beans and other vegetables together with their dressing so you can get a taste of just about everything with each forkful.
Every now and then, though, I’m reminded of the sheer beauty of the composed salad (or, to be all French about it,
salade composée) when I see a plate arranged so artfully it could pass for a still life. I got one of those reminders at the new D.C. restaurant La Piquette recently when, for one of the brunch courses, chef Francis Layrle served me a salad of beets, baby leeks, yogurt and walnuts that was a study in soothing simplicity. But it was more than the arrangement that soothed; Layrle had also cooked the leeks in a way that rendered them perfectly tender, with a clarified flavor and a hint of smokiness.
How? He charred them black on the grill, which caused them to steam inside; then he peeled them.