The prosciutto wore a cunning disguise ...

These are good days for the lettuce-obsessed.

Salad greens used to be something to dress up -- with smoked salmon, candied nuts, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes. A salad would no sooner be seen without some kind of recherche ingredient tossed in or worn proudly on top than it would go out to the table completely undressed.

But lately, L.A. chefs seem bent on sending out plates of unabashed, unadorned, perfectly dressed gorgeous greens. Unadorned, that is, till you stick in your fork and pull out a treat. Chefs these days are using heaps of delicate lolla rossa, tender baby lettuces or peppery young arugula to bury everything from prosciutto to braised vegetables to lobster carpaccio.

At Beechwood Restaurant in Venice, a so-called Italian parsley and escarole salad surprises any diner who neglected to read the fine print with a plate lined with thinly sliced prosciutto. Likewise, Beechwood’s smoked salmon carpaccio is hidden under a mound of apple cider-dressed mizuna.

But Beechwood isn’t the only place you’ll find treasures buried under a field of greens. At Patina, mixed baby greens, lightly dressed in a citrus vinaigrette, look like leaves fallen from a tree -- revealing underneath a meadow of beautiful braised baby vegetables. In a menu twist, though, it’s the salad that’s barely mentioned: The dish is called seasonal vegetables raw and braised with organic greens and citrus vinaigrette.

At Axe in Venice, the antipasto plate (which includes goat cheese, creamy polenta and the day’s selection of market vegetables) is covered with a tangle of mixed salad greens, as if the chefs tossed them there as a fresh, light bonus to an already finished dish.

Dig into a pear and goat cheese salad at Water Grill downtown and not only will you find the hazelnuts promised in the menu description, but deeper down, a pool of silky pear puree surrounded by a drizzle of thick cider reduction.

“I wanted it to look like something you might see in nature,” says Water Grill chef David LeFevre of his extravagant salad. He designed it so that as you dig into it, “you find little surprises” (specifically hazelnuts, poached pears and a crisp pear “chip”). When you push down on a forkful of lettuce, he explains, you dip the greens into the sauces. By the time you’re finishing, the goat cheese and sauces have blended into a creamy amalgam. Meanwhile, the watercress, arugula, treviso and frisee -- greens chosen to stand up to the other ingredients -- are still deliciously crisp. Which is how LeFevre intended it.

That’s just one of the reasons this goods-on-the-bottom presentation makes sense. Brooke Williamson, partner and co-chef of Beechwood Restaurant, explains that she got the idea to lay the prosciutto directly on the plate because, were she to lay it on top of the greens, it would be impossible to cut. (Case in point at Jar, where a chopped salad is shrouded in prosciutto with only a portion of the salad visible at the top, as in the opening of a volcano, inviting the diner to do the only thing she can: pick up the prosciutto and eat it with her fingers.)

So why does the prosciutto get the lesser billing at Beechwood? “I wanted the focus to be on the bright, fresh crispness of the greens,” Williamson says.

The idea of topping rich, often warm, ingredients with garden-fresh greens is not entirely new. After all, what is a tostada but a salad hiding a layer of warm refried beans and a fried corn tortilla?

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Delicious discoveries

One of the most popular lunchtime offerings at Osteria Angelini is Scortichino al Pepe Rosa, slices of grilled beef fillets covered with arugula dressed in olive oil and lemon juice, topped with shaved Parmesan.

Though not part of the original version invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice, carpaccio in this country is, more often than not these days, topped with such a heap of arugula that it begs the question: Where’s the beef? Angelini serves it that way, as do BOA Steakhouses. At Hollywood & Vine, steak and lobster carpaccio is buried under a veritable mountain of microgreens: surf and turf under grass.

Although the concept seemed upside down at first, using lettuce as a duvet rather than a bed for other ingredients makes good sense. Braised or roasted vegetables, when tossed into a salad, weigh down the greens -- and they’re difficult to get your fork into. But scatter them on the plate in the style of Patina’s salad and you can grab them, along with some of those nice greens, with one easy swipe of the fork. In warmer weather, dressed greens offer just the necessary flavor and texture to dress up a paillard of chicken or sliced Italian meats.

Regulars at the Palm Restaurants often request the Palm’s classic breaded veal Milanese to be topped with one of the restaurant’s famous salads: the Gigi (an Italian-style chopped salad), the chopped tomato and onion salad, or mixed greens.

Who knows where this could lead? At home, it’s led me to a new salad frontier: sandwich salads. Preferring a sandwich with a lower bread-to-filling ratio, I recently added so much lettuce to my BLT that I was forced to do away with the top slice of bread altogether. Such a substantial amount of greens naturally had to be dressed, and suddenly it was no longer a sandwich; it had metamorphosed into something different altogether: the BLT sandwich salad. That’s a slice of toast onto which thick slabs of bacon and slices of juicy tomatoes are buried under what looks to the naked eye to be a simple tossed green salad. Tomorrow: tuna salad sandwich buried under arugula. Then Gruyere cheese toast under a mountain of baby spinach. For the lettuce-obsessed, these are but salad days.

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Escarole and parsley salad

Total time: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

Note: From Brooke Williamson at Beechwood

Juice of two lemons ( 1/4 cup)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 small shallot, minced (about 1 1/2 tablespoons)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

8 thin slices Parma prosciutto ( 1/4 pound)

1 head escarole, washed and chopped into 1-inch pieces (8 cups chopped)

1 cup Italian parsley leaves (1 small bunch), washed and dried well

8 ounces burrata cheese

1. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the lemon juice, sugar, shallot and oil, and season with salt and pepper.

2. Line the bottoms of four plates with two slices of prosciutto each (or line one large serving platter with all of the prosciutto). Toss the escarole and parsley in the lemon vinaigrette and pile the greens on top of the prosciutto.

3. Sprinkle the cheese with additional salt, pull it into bite-size mounds with your fingers and place them around the greens and serve.

Each serving: 323 calories;

20 grams protein; 11 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams fiber; 23 grams fat; 10 grams saturated fat; 70 mg. cholesterol; 647 mg.

sodium.

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Raw and braised seasonal vegetables with organic greens and citrus vinaigrette

Total time: 50 minutes

Servings: 4

Note: From Theo Schoenegger at Patina. Use vegetables of the same size or cut larger ones so they take the same length of time to cook.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup water

2 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled

2 thyme sprigs

4 baby white carrots, peeled

4 baby orange carrots, peeled

4 baby yellow carrots, peeled

4 baby red carrots

4 planet carrots (small, orange, round)

4 breakfast radishes

4 baby turnips

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

8 haricots verts

8 sugar snap peas

2 baby fennel bulbs, shaved or very thinly sliced lengthwise on a mandoline

1 watermelon radish, julienned (or substitute a regular radish)

4 ounces mixed greens

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 tablespoon lime juice

1 tablespoon grapefruit juice

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil blended with 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Pepper

Sugar

1/4 hothouse cucumber, very thinly sliced lengthwise on a mandoline

1. In a large saute pan, place the one-fourth cup olive oil, water, garlic, thyme and the white, orange, yellow, red and planet carrots, the breakfast radishes, turnips and salt. Cut a piece of parchment paper the size of the pan and place it on top of the vegetables. Cook over low heat, until tender, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and removing vegetables as they get tender (breakfast radishes will be done first). Add more water if the pan gets dry before the vegetables are cooked; this will depend on the size of vegetables.

2. Meanwhile, blanch the haricots verts, then the sugar snap peas (separately) in salted water until al dente, about 1 to 2 minutes each. Plunge them in ice water to stop the cooking and dry well.

3. Divide the white, orange, yellow, red and planet carrots, the breakfast radishes and the turnips among 4 salad plates so that you have some of each type of vegetable in each serving. Slice the snap peas in half lengthwise and scatter onto the four plates. Place some of the shaved fennel on each plate.

4. Slice the haricots verts in half lengthwise and place in a large bowl. Add the julienned watermelon radish and the mixed greens.

5. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange, lime, grapefruit and lemon juices. Add the oils slowly, whisking constantly to emulsify. Season with salt and pepper. Add a pinch of sugar, depending on the sweetness of the grapefruit and orange. Pour the dressing over the greens mixture and toss to coat.

6. Place the dressed salad on top of the plated vegetables. Roll up the cucumber slices and tuck them under the greens.

Each serving: 288 calories; 2 grams protein; 11 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 27 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 660 mg. sodium.