Caesar salad with avocado

Starter: serves 4. Total time: 20 minutes

The main point of a Caesar salad is the dressing, a point not wasted on Americans who dedicate entire books to varying the ingredients. It's a great dressing, even if all you do is toss it on a bowlful of sliced Little Gems.

Dressing:

¹

Salad:

To make the dressing, bring a small pan of water to the boil and cook the eggs for one minute, remove and cool them under cold running water, then shell them into a liquidizer, scooping out the cooked white that lines the inside of the shell. Add the remaining ingredients for the dressing and whizz to a pale and creamy emulsion.

Cut the bread into 1cm cubes. Heat enough olive oil to shallow-fry the bread, add the cubes and cook, tossing constantly, until golden and crisp. Remove and cool them on absorbent paper.

To serve the salad, slice the bottoms off the chicory heads, remove any damaged outer leaves and separate the remainder. Arrange these on a large serving plate. Halve the avocados and extract the stones, incise the skin into quarters and peel it off, then slice the halves into thin strips. Mix these in with the chicory. Pour over the dressing and lightly mix in the Parmesan. Scatter the croutons over and serve straight away.