Tuesday Dinner Recipe: Perfect Salad Dressing

The salad dressing I make on Tuesdays, whether we have chard or kale or baby lettuces, is straightforward: Oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and sugar.  The rule of thumb with salad dressing is two parts oil to one part vinegar.  I put plenty of salt, pepper and sugar.  Adding more ingredients than this compromises the dressing – I’ve learned to leave a good thing alone.

Oil: Use a clean-tasting oil, like olive or grapeseed oil.  Don’t use corn or “vegetable” oil.  My research tells me cold-pressed and organic oil is best.

Vinegar: Any of these varieties are delicious: Apple cider, white wine, red wine, rice wine and white balsamic.  I don’t recommend dark balsamic, that stuff is the pits.  Apple cider is the best, as long as you add a little extra sugar to balance it out.

Salt: Everyone loves sea salt, but mined salt is also delicious.  I’m not a salt aficionado especially; I just pick an interesting salt and use it till it’s gone.  My current favorite is powdered salt from the Indian grocery store.

Pepper: Use freshly ground pepper.  You might as well shake cardboard dust on your food as use pre-ground pepper, for all the flavor you get.  Disposable Trader Joe’s and Kirkland pepper grinders are made of plastic, so you’re getting a little bit of plastic with your pepper, FYI.  Find an old grinder, with metal parts, at the thrift store.

Sugar: Everybody hates refined sugar these days.  I’m not a big hater, but I hear ya.  Do not put honey in this dressing, yuck.  I like raw organic coconut sugar from Figueroa Produce.  Any unrefined sugar would work.  Use plenty of it.

Preparing the greens: The best way to wash salad greens is to put a big pot in your kitchen sink and fill it with water.  Fully immerse your greens and give them a vigorous bath, swishing with your hand.  The silt will fall to the bottom of the pot and, unless your greens are very muddy, you can use this water for your other vegetables too.  Most often, we use chard for our salads.  We cut the ribs out, and the leafy part we cut into half-inch ribbons.  Chard and kale are chewy, so you need to cut them down to a dainty size.

Toppings: Sunflower seeds!  Don’t buy roasted.  Buy raw sunflower seeds and roast them in a pan, they taste amazing.  You don’t need oil; the seeds will exude their own oil when you dry roast them (medium heat).  Make sure to stir them or shake the pan often while they’re browning; they are easy to burn.  Salt them a little when they’re done and moist with their own oil.  Dried cranberries are good with roasted seeds, too.

Mix your salad dressing, then taste, adjust, mix, taste, adjust, mix, etc., until it’s perfect.  The easiest way to do this is in a mason jar.  You can screw it shut and emulsify your dressing instead of whisking.

Toss salad well with dressing before adding more.  It’s easy to assume you haven’t dressed the salad well enough when in fact you haven’t tossed it well enough.

That’s pretty much my salad methodology.  We had a particularly beautiful salad this week because Davey brought freshly picked baby lettuces with him.  Just wait until we have lettuce growing in our own garden at HM157…

We also made some kind of fantastic dim sum as we tested another Joseph Shuldiner recipe this week for his soon-to-be-published cookbook, Pure Vegan.  We made his Yuba Spring Rolls, filled with savory mushrooms and wrapped in soy milk skin and dabbed with dipping sauce.  The ingredients were simple, so it was surprising how flavorful these spring rolls were.  I would definitely make them again, as a showpiece at a dinner party.  You don’t need to eat a dozen, since they’re fried; we all had one each and it was a perfect little treat.

Isaac spring-rollin'

Using the spring rolls as a theme, we also made bok choy, and kung pao with king oyster mushrooms and tofu.  Our co-chef this week, Sharon, eats a gluten-free diet, so we replaced the soy sauce in the recipes with gluten-free organic tamari, with no discernable difference in taste.  David Kiang took bunches of photos this week as a window into the dinner.  :^)

We would love to see you here!  The community dinner is every Tuesday night from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at HM157.  Bring $5 to contribute to the material cost of the meal.  RSVP on The Arroyo Lowdown, where the menu is posted Monday nights.  BYOB.