"Better than a Cobb" Shallot and Asparagus Steak Salad

I started to get a lot of hits off of the term, "Asparagus Salad". I should qualify that statement. I started to get a lot of hits for an asparagus blog off the term Asparagus Salad. If you Yahoo! search Asparagus Salad my asparagus salad comes up in the pictures. My blog isn't mentioned. It's just the picture. It's a great picture done by a lovely photographer that does a lot of pro bono work for me out of pity. I don't really know who even uses Yahoo! as a search engine. Does Alta Vista sometimes get too bogged down with traffic? Having seen that and wanting to respond to a vague sense of what my audience (I use this term really loosely) would want, I set out to make the best asparagus salad I could. This is what I came up with, and honestly I think it's better than a Cobb.

Here's the long name:

Steak salad with blanched asparagus, grilled shallots, avocado, cherry tomato, crumbled blue cheese, and a fried egg.

Or for short: S.S.B.A.G.S.A.C.T.C.B.C.F.E. (This is how you will affectionately order it at Chili's when they buy the recipe from me)

Ingredients:

Mixed greens

Blanched asparagus

1 grilled shallot

Crumbled blue cheese

1/2 of an avocado

Cherry tomatoes

Grilled steak

1/3 cup olive oil

3 tablespoons of Grey Poupon

Red wine vinegar to taste

Salt

Pepper

1 fried egg per serving

Instructions:

I've previously talked about blanching asparagus, and I more recently talked about grilling steak. For the salad dressing in this all you need to do is put 1/3 of a cup of olive oil in a small bowl. Add your mustard and your red wine vinegar. Whisk it all until the mustard makes it emulsify. Add salt, pepper, and additional oil, mustard, or vinegar to taste. It's a fickle process and you're going to have to do taste tests until it's to your liking. I had most of my salad assembled as I was grilling my steak. When I say assembled what I mean is I just took the ingredients and I put them on a plate. What's nice about this recipe is that timing isn't a factor. A lot of the stressful element of cooking is derived from trying to cook several different things that cook at different rates and having them all ready at the same time. Friend, this is a salad. There's no need for any of that. When the steak is done let it rest and cool. I had everything sliced, chopped and plated and then I just fried an egg with ease for the final garnish. It made a hearty dinner that was easy and delicious.