This is a very last minute affair which is lovely served in the winter.  I have included some optional extras at the bottom of the page but be careful you don’t over do it.  If you feel the need to jazz it up a bit I would use one of the ingredients from the list of optional extras.  Personally, however, I like it plain.  This recipe serves about six people.

For the salad:

1/2 pound of mixed salad leaves – quite robust if you can get them with radiccio and/or rocket

For the dressing:

1/2 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 large clove of garlic (peeled and left whole)
1 shallot, minced
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme or other mixed herbs
1 can of smoked oysters

Instructions:

About five minutes before you want to serve the salad, put all the ingredients for the dressing in a little saucepan and heat them gently on the stove.  Given the oysters are cooked you just want to make sure they are warm, and impart their smoky flavour into the oil.  It takes about five minutes.  Once that is done, remove the oysters and the garlic with a slotted spoon.  Discard the garlic.

Pour the warm dressing over the leaves and give them a good stir around. 
Arrange them artfully on six plates and then divvy up the smoked oysters, sharing between the plates.
Garnish with some pine nuts which you have gently heated in a dry frying pan over low heat, stirring constantly to ensure they don’t burn and some mustard or alfalfa sprouts.  Don’t use bean sprouts as they don’t have a strong enough flavour to counter act the oysters.

Eat quickly.  Yum.

Optional extras:

Little pieces of goat’s cheese that you have toasted undere the grill on a well oiled pan for five minutes or so.
Little pieces of roasted pumpkin, squash, beet root or carrot.
Substitute smoked mussels for the oysters.
Substitute roasted pumpkin seeds for the pine nuts.
Sections of blood orange that have been individually peeled (ie free of all membrane).
Very thinly sliced fennel.