In the cooler months, I’m all about the red meat in heavy sauces with fried things. Soon as we get that first taste of summer, I get a taste for something healthier and lighter. But not too healthy or light.

Big Meaty Salad

You’ll need:

A head of butter lettuce, roughly torn
8 oz secchi salami, diced
Or in a pinch, the same amount of Genoa salami
Four small tomatoes, chopped
Or just one big-ass beefsteak tomato, if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere you can get them juicy and ripe this time of year
Half a cucumber, sliced
A handful of garbanzo beans
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 clove of garlic, sliced thin
Kosher salt & pepper, as always

First we’ll make the dressing. Put your red wine vinegar in a small bowl, along with the garlic slices. Add a pinch of two of salt and five or nine twists of the pepper mill. Stick a couple big pasta bowls in the freezer. Then let the vinegar soak for 30 minutes while you go out on the deck, shirtless, and bask in the evening sun.

Scoop the garlic out of the vinegar. Glop the mustard in there. Slowly whisk in the olive oil, a few drops at a time, just like you see the pros do on TV. Or do what I do. Throw everything into a Cuisinart MiniPrep, and hold down the “Chop” button until your mess looks like salad dressing – about five seconds. Stick it in the fridge and have some wine. Drink topless on the deck again, especially if you’re young and pretty and have a deck in line-of-site of mine.

Take the rest of your ingredients and toss them in the biggest salad bowl you can find. Drizzle on just enough of the dressing to give everything a slight coating. (If you see a bunch of dressing pooled at the bottom of the bowl, then you’ve used too much.)

As a salad, you might get four servings. As a meal, the way I like to do it, you’ve made enough salad for two.

Three great things about this recipe. First, you can expand it to feed as many people as you’ve got. Second, there’s plenty of leftover dressing for next time. Third, you can add pretty much anything in there – don’t limit yourself to the ingredients I listed. Fourth, it goes great with almost any light red wines or dry white wines – so open whatever you have handy. OK, so there are four great things here.

Or five, if you count the taste.