Salads and Dressings

Good morning! Salads are large part of a lot of the population's diet, including vegetarians, vegans, and girls who don't want to eat a lot on dates. This series focuses on the ingredients of and how to build a salad with a vinaigrette dressing that doesn't separate.

The "normal" salad is made with a type of lettuce, a protein, some other vegetables or fruit, and a dressing. 

A basic vinaigrette dressing is comprised of oil and vinegar in the following proportion:

2 OIL : 1 VINEGAR

For example, if you're making a balsamic dressing, mix 1 cup of balsamic vinegar to 2 cups of your favorite oil (olive, avocado, pumpkin, canola).

On our salad menu for the series (two days of class), we made mayonnaise, vinaigrettes, Caesar salad, jicama salad, tri-color salad, salad niçoise, chicken salad, and mushrooms Berkeley.

To begin, we took some excellent thick bread and made crutons. The crutons on the pan on the left are cut in cubes, and the ones on the right are torn. There are different uses for each kind of cruton, depending on how you want the final salad to look (clean or rustic).

Below, chef is demonstrating how to mash anchovies for the Caesar dressing.

I was tasked with making an herb vinaigrette, and you can see my setup below:

Into the dressing I mixed fresh tarragon, mint, and parsley. *see the recipe at the bottom of the post.

It was delicious! Since the vinaigrette is made with oil and vinegar, two ingredients that will not mix/bond, we added an emulsifier to hold the two together so the dressing wouldn't separate. Mustard, like egg yolks or whites or soy lechithin, is made so that it bonds the oil molecules and the vinegar molecules together. Sometimes this is temporary, and the dressing or mayonnaise will separate over time.

Below you can see the class's Caesar salad with clear dressing:

They did make a second Caesar dressing that was made without anchovies and was more opaque, but I didn't like it as much.

Here, I'm mashing roasted garlic cloves for Roasted Garlic Aioli with a mortar and pestle.

The class worked on a few other salads while I was making my vinaigrette and aioli, and this is a finished Jicama Salad with Red Onions and Oranges. It was dressed with a poppy seed dressing that I DEFINITELY will make again.

I packed up my garlic aioli for another day:

It can sit in the fridge for up to 2 days.

The last salad of the day was the Tri-Color Salad, made with endive (the white), raddichio (the red), and arugula (the green).

It was dressed with a light vinaigrette.

Stay tuned for Salad Day 2!

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Here are two of my favorite recipes from the day:

Mustard-Herb Vinaigrette

 8oz white wine vinegar

3 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 oz minced shallot

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

salt to taste

black pepper to taste

2 tsp sugar

24 oz olive oil or canola oil

1 TB chopped tarragon

1 TB chopped mint

1 TB chopped parsley

Mix together vinegar, mustard, shallots, salt, pepper, and sugar.

Whisk in the oil.

Stir in the vegetables and add sugar, salt, or pepper as needed.

Serve immediately or refrigerate for up to 1 week.

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Jicama, Red Onion, and Orange Salad

1 jicama

1/2 red onion

3 naval oranges

Poppy Seed Dressing

Peel and cut the jicama and red onion.

Cut the jicama and red onion into 1/8" x 1/8" sticks (matchsticks).

Peel the oranges and cut supremes, or use canned and drained oranges.

Toss the vegetables and fruit with the poppy seed dressing and serve!

To frost a glass with poppy seeds, dip the glass rim in egg white and then dip in poppy seeds.

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Poppy Seed Dressing

3 oz honey
1 TB paprika
2 TB ketchup
2 TB Dijon mustard
2 TB orange juice
1 tsp ground black pepper
pinch of salt
3 oz. wine vinegar (your favorite kind)
2 oz chopped onion (about a 1/4 of a medium onion)
1 cup canola oil
1 1/2 TB poppy seeds

Dump all ingredients (except oil) into a food processor, pulsing after each addition.
Slowly drizzle the oil into the mixture as the processor is pulsing to combine.
Serve on your favorite salad!      

Enjoy!