Goat Cheese & Sundried Tomato Salad

This salad pairs two lettuces with completely different personalities. Bitter, crunchy radicchio rings the outside of the plate while soft, buttery Bibb lettuce fills the center. Each gets dressed separately so neither overpowers the other.

The Dijon vinaigrette is a classic French ratio: mustard whisked with red wine vinegar, then oil drizzled in slowly to emulsify. That mustard does double duty as both a flavor punch and the emulsifier that keeps the dressing from separating. Sharp, tangy, and clean.

Crumbled goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on top bring richness and concentrated sweetness that tie the bitter and buttery greens together. Every forkful hits different notes: creamy, tangy, bitter, sweet, chewy.

Chef Tips

• Whisk the oil into the mustard-vinegar mixture slowly in a thin stream. Dumping it in all at once won’t emulsify and you’ll get a broken, oily dressing.
• Tear the lettuce leaves by hand rather than cutting. Knife edges bruise the leaves and cause them to brown faster.
• Toss each lettuce separately and gently. Radicchio and Bibb have different textures and need different amounts of dressing.
• Let the goat cheese come to room temperature before crumbling. Cold goat cheese breaks into hard chunks instead of soft, creamy crumbles.

Variations

• Warm goat cheese: Bread rounds of goat cheese in panko and pan-fry until golden, then set on top of the dressed greens for a warm-cold contrast.
• Toasted walnut: Add toasted walnut pieces for crunch and a nutty flavor that pairs naturally with goat cheese.
• Balsamic swap: Replace red wine vinegar with balsamic for a sweeter, more syrupy dressing that complements the sun-dried tomatoes.