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Grilled Salad

In short, slice up stuff, oil and pepper it, grill it, cut it up, add oil and vinegar, eat it!

I suspect my dear friend Tracy isn't totally convinced I really make grilled salad. In truth, I really love this stuff. So here's how it's done:

Procedure:
In short, slice up stuff, oil and pepper it, grill it, cut it up, add oil and vinegar, eat it!

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Cut the tops and bottoms off of the onion and peel off the skin.

I'm using 2 here because I want extra onion to put on top my burger. Only one is for the salad.
Stick toothpicks into the sides of the onion to hold it together. Oil up both sides with olive oil and pepper liberally.

Take care to not puncture yourself with the toothpicks.

I did.

Oww.

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Cut the head of romaine lettuce in half. I'm only using half a head. You can use more. You can also buy hearts of romaine and use those instead of full heads.
Oil up the back-side of the romaine with olive oil. It looks like alot, but most will run off and serve to oil up the rest of the ingredients.

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Flip the romaine over and drizzle olive oil over it. Add lots of freshly ground pepper.
Once the coals are hot, slap the onion on the grill. It takes much longer to cook, especially if cut thick. So they go on early.
While the onion starts to grill, cut the radicchio in half.

If it's a really big head, cut it again into quarters. In any case, make sure there's a bit of core in each piece, so they won't fall apart.
Drizzle the radicchio with olive oil and pepper.

You don't need to explicitly oil the backs. Just rub them around a little in the oil left from the romaine.
After the onion has been going for 4 minutes, flip it over.

When we make burgers, this is when we add them to the grill. Which we did, right after taking this picture.
While the onion continues to grill, slice the belgian endive in half. I like to use two heads, since they're quite small.
As with everything else so far, drizzle with oil and pepper. Slide 'em around a little in the oil on the plate, to lube up the back-side.
After the onion has gone a second 4 minutes, flip them again, and add everything else to the grill, cut side down.

(Notice we've also flipped the burgers. One secret to good burgers is to make them from a half and half combo of ground chuck and ground sirloin. The chuck provides needed fat, and the sirloin provides big beefy flavor.)
After 4 minutes, flip everything over.

One onion is getting rather dark, so it's been moved off the heat a bit.
4 more minutes later and everything gets flipped for the last time.

We've also put buns on the rack to toast. (For a real treat, put your burger on an "everything" bagel.)

We've also put some cheese on the burgers. We use Jarlsburg cheese. It's basically the Norwegian version of Swiss cheese. It's milder than Swiss and doesn't develop any off flavors when melted, as good Swiss tends to do.
After a final 4 minutes, here's all the salad stuff. That's 12 minutes total (4+4+4) for everything, except the onion, which gets 20 minutes total (4+4+4+4+4).

The timing will depend heavily on how how your grill is. You want the edges charred, but if anything starts to burn, take it off the grill early.
Cut up the romaine into bite-sized chunks. Don't include the core. Put it in a big salad bowl. (Not the core, dummy.)
Cut up the radicchio into bite-sized chunks. Don't include the core. Add it to the salad bowl.
Cut up the belgian endive into bite-sized chunks. Don't include the core, which can be tricky to see. Add to the salad bowl.
Cut up the onion into bite-sized chunks. (Remove the toothpicks first, duh.) Add to the salad bowl.
Mix up everything in the bowl and add a drizzle of olive oil, to gloss it up a little.

Just a drizzle. You want it glossy, not oily.
Add balsamic vinegar to taste. Start with just a splash. You don't want it to reek of vinegar.
Eat it while it's still warm!

Eat dammit!

(In case you're wondering, yes, I ate that whole bowl myself.)