Soup & Salad, part un and deux

Un= "one" in French.  To my taste, the best food in the world is chocolate.  The second best is pizza.  If it wouldn't have serious health consequences, I would be content to live on those two foods.  After that, the best food item would have to be salad.  Salads are remarkable.  They are healthy, delicious, fun, affordable, and even pretty.  I love that there are an endless amount of options and varieties of salads.  There are salads appropriate to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Salads  un and deux were from "Barefoot in Paris".  I served the "Warm Mushroom Salad with Prosciutto" with the "Lentil and Sausage" soup.  I have to say, I missed a sweet element to the salad.  In the mid nineties, lunch and dinner salads combining the sweet with the savory were popularized.  As soon I was out on my own and preparing salads, I followed the trend and haven't stopped since.  I love raspberries with spinach, apples with blue cheese, citrus with red onions and avocados, etc.  This salad contained proscuitto, sauteed mushrooms, parsley, sun dried tomatoes, and parmesan.  It was lovely... but I did miss some hint of sweet.  However, combining a fruit (whether dried or fresh) with sauteed mushrooms just didn't seem appropriate, so I suppose I would serve it the same way again.

The lentil sausage soup was good- albeit just slightly predicable?  It was comforting, hearty, and affordable. The parmesan on top is absolutely essential.

Duex: "two" in french.  The Rosemary white bean soup (which I neglected to photograph) was fantastic, and in contrast to the lentil soup, not at all predictable.  Rosemary's strong flavor I usually reserve for a rub on a steak or a fresh herb to flavor focaccia.  In the very simple and creamy white bean soup, the flavor of the herb was clear and beautiful.  All the soup required as a garnish was a simple drizzle of olive oil- a good quality spicy olive oil, if you have one on hand.  I used a Spanish olive oil and it seemed just right.  This soup was different, charming, and strikingly affordable to prepare: certainly company-worthy.  I also served it with a delicious salad, pictured below.  It was supposed to be a salad containing endive, pears, roquefort, and walnuts.  I stayed true to the recipe with the exception of the endive, which I chose to substitute for hearts of romaine, as my produce drawer was full of it.  The combination of the pears and creamy roquefort was totally delicious.  The vinaigrette used lemon as the acid in place of vinegar and it was just right.  This is my new favorite salad.