The great old glitzless grills of San Francisco’s financial district with their waiters in rumpled tuxedoes — Jack’s, for instance, an ancient hangout for Who’s Who-ers as diverse as Lucius Beebe and Jascha Horenstein, not to mention a macho novelist from Key West and a cinema Casablancan or two — are where I learned to float this mellifluous salad across an enchanted palate.  It’s a California classic, given a timely twist with the balsamic vinaigrette that came into our lives with the gastronomically roaring 80s.  For an artistic presentation you could cup the shrimp and avocado in large lettuce leaves half shell style.  And you might want to pretend you’re eating at one of those no-nonsense downtown grills ‘neath a short mile of coat hooks, fat pats of butter at the ready for your sourdough, and a saucer of lemon wedges handy in case of need.  This is the sort of place where, if you can’t decide between the veal porterhouse and the sweetbreads poulette, your tuxedoed carrier/philosopher will flip a coin for you.

Combine about 1/3 pound of cooked shrimp with slices of a medium-sized avocado and a fairly generous amount of butter lettuce.

Toss gently with — or pour over individual servings at the table — a dressing made by whisking a little lemon juice and more balsamic vinegar into a dab of Dijon mustard and slowly adding olive oil, in a proportion of 2-1/2 or 3 oil to 1 vinegar/lemon.  An optional extra for added bite: briefly pan-toasted pine nuts.

         Another homogeneous salad, without sharp edges, but scarcely bland.  The tomatoes here are optional: you want to use juicy, vine-ripened specimens, tomatoes with soul, not those stiff supermarket grenades that have as much taste as a gleaming shopping cart. Pray for a farmers’ market near you, even if it’s like a mad al fresco emporium I know where feisty aunties unresponsive to the niceties of waiting in line for one’s beautiful produce must be tactfully ignored.  Or make friends with zealots who grow their own.

In this recipe all the ingredients have more or less equal prominence: about 1/4 pound of cooked shrimp; 2 or 3 medium-sized leeks, steamed, cooled and sliced; slices of hard boiled egg, 1 egg per person; small tomato wedges; and the leaves of soft lettuce along with some “boutique” lettuces, those curly-coily combinations of arugula, radicchio, etc. found in most supermarkets and all outlets for “whole” or “real” food.

As for the leeks, I generally use the white parts and a little of the green. Vigorous washing before steaming goes without saying!

Dress this salad with the basic mustard-dill vinaigrette of our first recipe.  A little chopped scallion is not amiss — if it’s visible dotting the outer edges of your vinaigrette you win points in the display department.