Demi-glace is another French sauce that every self-respecting restaurant keeps on hand. As an apprentice, I prepared it thousands of times for use in a variety of other sauces and dishes.

Also called brown sauce, demi-glace is traditionally prepared with what the French refer to as espagnole sauce (a mixture of brown stock, vegetables, brown roux, and tomatoes), brown stock, and Madeira or sherry. It’s simplified here to create a flavorful sauce you can keep on hand to add intense flavor to a number of dishes.

This is a recipe of my own devising so many of the measurements aren’t exact – just to taste. But, once you learn what you like, it is delicious and much lighter than meat sauces.

Aside from the endive, cilantro, radishes, and feta, the list of ingredients below is a rough sketch. I’ve been known to substitute fennel for radicchio, and occasionally I add a few nuggets of Parmigiano Reggiano, some meaty flakes of smoked trout, or even just a few canned chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and dried. The key, in any case, is the quality of the ingredients. For salads like this one, I like a Hass avocado that’s on the firm side of ripe: not hard, but solid, with just a hint of give—the potential for softness, you could say. I buy my endive on the small-to-medium size—no larger than 3 ounces each—with no bruises, brown spots, or other blemishes, and I look for tight, compact heads of radicchio, each about the size of a large man’s fist, with smooth, shiny leaves. I serve this salad on its own, as the center of the meal, with a hunk of crusty bread or a few roasted sweet potato “fries” on the side.