Anne Leith's awesome salad

I think that is basically the best name for this salad. Its a salad, in that there are vegetables in it, but it could also be an appetizer (served with bread) or a full meal (served with more bread). I added more stuff to Anne's base salad, and changed the dressing due to a lack of some crucial ingredients (soy sauce), but any time you mix avocados with perfect heirloom tomatoes, its hard to go wrong.

I really meant to take a photo with the blurry iphone, but I didn't bring it, and its not like there was any left over. Use your imaginations, and then make it for yourself, you will not be disappointed. I don't have an Ed-rating for this, since he wasn't here to devour it with me, but I do have an Ali-, Gail-, and Peter-rating, and it passed with flying colors for all of them.

Anne's awesome salad (+ Alex's changes)
Served four, as a side course

1 avocado
2 perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes - go for the best quality you can find, here.
Basil leaves
~1/4lb marinated mozzarella balls
~10 kalamata olives
1-2C chopped spinach
1/2 cucumber
Dressing, or a nice pesto in lieu of dressing
Salt, to taste

Your serving dish for this should be wide and flat - to showcase the beauty of this salad. It can be made in a bowl, but looks nicer when on a serving dish. The spinach and cucumber aren't part of Anne's original salad, and don't really do anything except add more green stuff to round out the total volume to feed four people...

Coarsely chop the spinach, and put that down as your first layer. Peel the cucmber and cut that into slices, put that on top of the spinach, that is your second layer. Slice the tomato (use a really sharp knife) into rounds, and lay those on top of the salad. Sprinkle on some salt. Slice the avocado, and layer that on top of the tomato. Slice the mozzarella rounds into 3-4 slices, sprinkle those on top, then halve the olives lengthwise, and sprinkle those on top too. Chiffonnade the basil - the more the better, but I didn't want to kill Barry the basil plant by taking too many of his leaves this early. Salt the whole thing gently.

The dressing was mostly olive oil. An oily pesto would work well too, and Anne swears by soy sauce on her avocados.

Dressing:
Makes far more than you need at once

1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
1 red pepper
dried herbs of your choosing
a couple pieces of lime rind
juice of a lime
Olive oil to fill a 1C tupperware

The idea here is to let the oil steep in the flavors of the dressing, and then just drizzle the oil on top. Use a tupperware as your mixing bowl/storage container, then you can have flavored oil for other salad dressings, too. So smart. Chop the onion, garlic, and pepper - if you want it really spicy, keep the seeds, otherwise discard them. Put everything into a tupperware, add the oil until its all covered, put on the lid and shake to combine. Let it sit for at least an hour, then shake before serving, and serve with a spoon, to drizzle the oil over the salad.

Make this salad.