(Date: 26-Feb-2013. The 30th recipe in 2013)
I'm never a salad girl. Grown up in Asia, I am too used to stir-fry vegetables or leafy veggie soup. However I am eager to do a meatless day once or twice a week - to eat further down the food chain and live lighter on the earth once in a while. I think salad is a good point to start with (and less dishes to wash too).
Vinaigrette, also known as French Dressing, is probably the easiest salad dressing. Despite of its fancy name, it is just an emulsion made with 1 part of vinegar with 3 parts of oil. Most regular home cook should have heaps of both already sitting in the pantry, so there is definitely no need to pay an extra two pounds to buy a bottle. It feels more natural to DIY at home too. I can hardly believe oil and vinegar (think about oil & water) can form stable emulsion without separating apart for the whole shelf life without a bit of help of chemical or additives.
The vinaigrette recipe is very loosely based on "Dressing up: the perfect vinaigrette" by Felicity Cloake, the columnist on The Guardian (link here). It's quite an interesting and inspiring article on custom-making your own vinaigrette. But instead of following her "perfect vinaigrette" (which I tried but didn't fall for), I picked my own favourite ingredients. After all, the whole point of making your own vinaigrette is to please your own taste buds.
What I used (for 2)?
For the vinaigrette
1T fig balsamic vinegar
3T walnut oil
1/2t whole-grain English mustard
1/4t golden (unrefined) castor sugar
pinch of salt
pinch of ground black pepper
For the leafy salad
50g baby spinach
25g wild rocket
125g baby plum tomatoes
80g feta cheese
What I did?
(For the salad) Wash and drain the spinach & rocket. Halve the tomatoes. Crumble feta cheese. Combine all in a large salad bowl.
(For the vinaigrette) Pour in all vinaigrette ingredients in a small jar. Screw the lid on tightly and shake till you have an emulsion. Pour over the salad.
What I felt? Easy & quick. The fig flavour from the fig balsamic vinegar added an extra layer of complexity to this refreshing dressing.
How good was it? 8/10. As a hardcore carnivore, I didn't expect I'd enjoy this salad and dressing that much.
How easy was it? 10/10. All you need is to get a jar, screw on the lid & shake. Voila!
How economical was it? 10/10. Strictly speaking it depends on the quality of balsamic vinegar & oil you're using. But I think the ingredients are usually readily available from the pantry anyway, so I gave it a 10/10.
Will I make this again? Definitely! I can foresee this French dressing will appear a lot as summer is approaching. I feel adventurous to try out other vinegar-oil combinations as well. Hum.. now tempted to get a bottle of raspberry balsamic vinegar..
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