Quatro Leoni salad

Several years ago we ate at a restaurant in the piazza della Passera in Florence called La Trattoria dei Quattro Leoni. They served us the most amazing starter salad-seriously, true love formed at first bite. It was also amazingly simple (though difficult to entirely reproduce).

Ever since, I have tried to replicated it at home. I've never gotten it just right-thanks in part to different produce variety and the inability to accurately capture the dressing, but I have captured the spirit of it and my version, while not nearly as enticing as the real deal, is a big hit in our home.

I always use the pre-packaged lettuce--usually the one that is a variety of four different baby salad leaves, always including butter leaf. If you can't find it, pure arugula is the next best bet. Their salad was served with fresh baby arugula, but I've found the varieties at my local store are not fresh enough to taste yummy without a few other types mixed in.

The salad can be served with a very wide variety of cheeses, the catch is there needs to be 2-3 and the flavors must play well off each other. One should nearly always be some form of a Swiss or soft white cheddar, when possible. I'm pretty positive the original salad used a very expensive kind of Swiss cheese. If I don't have Jarlsberg, a close second to what they used, I'll often use white cheddar, regular cheddar and Sicilian jack, or white jack, hot pepper jack, and something creamier like Havarti. Whatever you do, cube it and throw it in. If you have only one kind of super creamy, pretty pricey white cheese, then one cheese would do (their's, as I can recall, had just one).

Dice 1/2 of a granny smith apple, dice 1 whole avocado, finely chop 1/4 small to medium yellow onion (optional).

Top with about 1/8 cup of pine nuts.

Either create your own basil dressing OR for a similar, easier and equally as delicious flavor buy El Torrito's Cilantro Pepita Caesar dressing.

Top with a very small amount of sea salt and a healthy dose of freshly ground pepper.

Manga!