Such a great salad, we ate this two nights in a row.  We have never, ever done that before.  I incorporated my favorite farmers market find of the week, pea shoots, into a salad I’ve made dozens of times and the result was so delicious.  Scott said it was the best salad he’d ever had.  Our 11-year-old “sous-chef” cleaned her plate two nights in a row....and she normally resists any repeating meals.  (So spoiled! :)

Pea shoots are so fun.  As the 11 year old helpfully pointed out, they taste just like peas.  They taste very much like eating peas right out of the pod in the garden which we did a lot of last summer.  I keep thinking they would be delicious on soft bread with gravlax and maybe a tiny smear of cream cheese or butter.  Also with egg salad.

I used a fairly even amount of mixed baby lettuces and pea shoots (maybe slightly more of lettuce to pea shoots) and I gave the pea shoots a rough chop.   The salad is inspired by something that Tommy Habetz made when he was cooking at Meriwether’s.  He used a grainy mustard dressing that was so good with the smoked trout, so here’s what I did.  I reached for my Bon Ton Salad Dressing (always in the fridge), and doctored it up just a bit.  To roughly 1/3 cup of the dressing, I added a teaspoon of grainy mustard and 2 tablespoons of chopped chives and a squeeze of lemon.  And, yes, the salad would be delish with straight up Bon Ton Dressing too.  I dressed and tossed the salad greens and pea shoots together and plated them, then topped them with bite sized pieces of smoked trout and a generous sprinkling of chopped marcona almonds.  The smoked trout that I get from Newman’s Fish is one of the few they don’t smoke in house.  They source it from Idaho because they think the product is better than their own.  For us, 8 oz of the fish was enough for six salads.

We loved this salad with one of our white Burgundy imports -- a Pouilly Fuissé, Clos Varambon, from Chateau des Rontets which has floral and citrus notes, nice minerality and nice roundness.  One of my favorites.

And I’d happily eat this salad again tonight!