why would you buy salad dressing?
Never understood it. Occasionally there are some that are nice for a rare treat or a change, but routine salad consumption... well i go with this.
You want blue cheese? PUT IT ON THE SALAD. Ranch? Well fine, drench your salad in herbs, salt, buttermilk and mayonnaise. No good answer to that one, i guess. Ranch Lite? Here lets add a ton of fillers and texture modifiers to replace the mayo.
I'm not a fan of replacement foods. Maybe that's sort of obvious.
Bake with butter (and fry your eggs and bread stuff)
Cook with Olive oil.
Food should be nutrient dense, not calorie dense. Calories are fine if you're burning them off.
Okay.
So last night I made the dressing keeping an eye on amounts (roughly).
Part one, all this goes into a 16-20oz screw top jar
2 Valencia oranges, squeezed (with pulp, seeds removed duh) (about 4 oz or so of juice)
2 oz of unfiltered apple cider vinegar
3 oz of good Balsalmic vinegar (if it has caramel coloring it ain't worth it)
1.5 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Colman's ground Mustard
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried Basil (can use tarragon or other dried herbs of your choice of mix and match, i like it with basil)
2 cloves garlic run through a press
SHAKE THIS UP. All up. Mix it up. Distribute all the stuff equally, get it well mixed.
Make note of the volume and roughly double it using a good Extra virgin olive oil.
Use a bit less for a more vinegary salad dressing or more for a smoother one.
Once the oil is in, cap the jar and shake it well for a while.
The Mustard will help keep it from separating. You'll have a wicked nice emulsion (if you shake it enough and have enough mustard in there).
It is good.
Pour it over a simple salad of washed lettuce, grated carrot and shredded cabbage. Maybe a few slices of cucumber or radish. Add some garbanzo beans if you have them, feta or blue cheese maybe. Some olives, maybe a few good bits of tomato, any veggie you want. Slice up some Kale really thin and toss it in, spinach. What ever you want. Raw mushrooms, hot peppers, sweet peppers, sliced almonds, walnuts. Skip the fruit, there's enough sweetness in the dressing and in the veggies, don't need to overpower them with apples or orange wedges, although de-skinned orange wedges are heavenly in this salad. So hey - fuck it - put fruit in there too.
Unifying theme and what makes it cohesive is this dressing. Simple to make. Takes no time at all. Out of stuff you should have on hand anyway.
Final bit of advice:
To keep the flavor the focus a bit of lettuce is all you need.
Call it the gateway salad.
A variation of this dressing got my wife, who had eschewed anything green until grad school, to voraciously eat salads. She's still iffy on Brussels sprouts though.
It was sad to see the volume of salad made for 12 people. I made more salad for 4 people last night and we were all fighting over who got more. Seriously.
waffles were good too this morning btw. going to be doing the yeasty ones again soon i'm sure. Might even be able to convince the oldest to make it before going to bed!
heddwch
G
Post Script:
this is a dressing formula that i've been tweaking and making for probably close to 25 years, the amounts are rough estimations eyeballing it... i think the liquid volumes are pretty accurate though, and it may take a few times to tweak the flavors in a direction you prefer. I can talk at length about potential variations if desired.
