Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

This salad was the first salad I ever learned to make.  We grew up in a farming community on the prairies and salads meant potato salad, coleslaw, iceberg lettuce with chopped fresh vegetables, jellied salads and the occasional aspic.  But we knew how to make all of these without using recipes.  So when I say that Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing is the first one I learned to make, I mean the first outside the realm of the typical farm salads of our area.

It is imperative for this salad to be served immediately.  The bacon fat congeals very quickly.  You can see in my picture that the spinach leaves do not have a glossy look.  The fat has already cooled by the time I took the picture.

I remember making a cooked dressing for it.  Since all of my cookbooks, except The Joy of Cooking, are in storage my only other source is the internet.  This recipe looks interesting but I would love to have that old recipe with a cooked dressing.  If anyone has that recipe, would you pretty please share it with me?

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing              serves 4

4 slices of thickly cut bacon
1/4 cup cider vinegar or vinegar of your choice
2 T warm, melted bacon fat
1 t dijon mustard
2 t yellow mustard seeds (optional)
2 t chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, taragon
1 t grated onion
1 t sugar
1 large bunch of spinach (or a bag of baby spinach), trimmed, washed and dried
2 or 3 hard boiled eggs, cut into rounds or crumbled

Cut the bacon into 1" pieces and cook over medium heat until all the fat is rendered out and the bacon pieces are crisp.  Drain the bacon pieces on paper towels.

Reserve about 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat in the pan.  Keep the pan warm.  Add sugar, mustard seeds, grated onion, herbs.  Whisk in the vinegar.    Toss the spinach with the warm dressing.  Arrange on a plate and garnish with egg slices (or crumbled egg) and crumbled bacon.  Serve immediately.