Arugula Salad with Smoked Salmon, Goat Cheese, Salsa Verde, Poached Egg and Shaved Asparagus

This was one of the many lovely lunches we made while in St. Barth for vacation. The restaurants are prohibitively expensive, but the grocery store (non-plural) is stocked full of great cheeses, cured meats, (wine) and other wonderful French ingredients that inspire one to cook (along with the coercion of the restaurant pricing). 

Serves 2 

Ingredients

• One 8-10 ounce package washed and dried arugula (or other spicy green)
• 4 ounces smoked salmon, chopped into ~3/4" squares
• 2-3 ounces high water content goat cheese, e.g. "Petit Billy" or something else where it is still packaged in water. Obviously, you can do one with lower water content if not available
• 1/4 cup Salsa Verde. See the link, but basically this is just capers minced with parsley, olive oil, salt, a little mustard and any other fresh herbs you have. In St. Barth's we only had basil, so I mixed that in, and the anise-y sub-tone of the basil was a fine substitute for tarragon that I would usually use. I didn't use any garlic or shallots on vacation, and it was fine--maybe better. 
• Lemon vinaigrette
• juice of one lemon
• 1/2 tsp mustard
• 1 T sugar (or more as needed) or honey if you have it
• 1/2 tsp salt (more as needed)
• EVOO  in appx 3-times the volume of the lemon juice
• Mix top 4 ingredients and then slowly whisk in EVOO until emulsified
•  2 eggs, poached
• place in heavily salted (and vinegar-ed, if you have it) water. Cook for two minutes, the remove with a slotted spoon. try to shake off as much water as possible without breaking the yolk
• (optional) 1/2 bunch asparagus, blanched for 2 minutes, tips removed (and saved) and stalks shaved with a potato peeler

Assembly

Toss arugula and optional asaparagus (both tips and ribbons) with lemon vinaigrette. Add in half of Salsa Verde and toss "roughly," i.e. so it's not evenly distributed. Arranges salmon, crumbled goat cheese and poached egg on top. Serve with Rose wine :)