The Department of Salad Dressing Room: Perk Up Your Winter Salads👗 🚪 🥗
And yourself! With Pear and White Balsamic Vinaigrette! Roasted Red Pepper Dressing! Basil Pesto Dressing! Plus, a Delicious Shredded Carrot Salad with Avocado Cups.
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I’M VERY MUCH NOT ON BOARD with sweeping, definitive proclamations—at least, not when other people make them, and especially when it comes to food. I’m talking about the kind of statements that imply there’s a “right” way to eat—which is just completely absurd.
The truth, of course, is that I have issued such decrees myself (usually quite loudly, to no one, while driving to the grocery store). I’m sure we all have. For instance, I used to say broad, awful things about Thousand Island dressing and iceberg lettuce, possibly because it made me feel superior: The worst! Who eats that stuff? And for years, I also spoke uncharitably about ranch and blue cheese dressings. Shamefaced now, I hang my head at the thought of all of this.
In my defense, my strongest opinions were a reflection of my weak character, which allowed me to go along with whatever food snootinesses were fashionable in my youth. Luckily, another one of my bad traits is that I am fickle. So I soon went racing back into the open arms of creamy dressings and cold, crunchy, nutrition-empty iceberg, as you can see here, here, and here. And I’m never leaving.
Obviously, I would never tell anyone not to glean wisdom from the overbearing opinions of others. If someone who is a culinary expert offers us knowledge and guidance, even in the form of condescending commands, we should take it seriously, as a means of getting ever closer to eating the way we want to eat.
But I truly believe no one wants a culinary prison warden. Being bossy and unyielding never inspired anyone, and it often scares people out of the kitchen. It upsets me when I see such food questions on the internet as the ones below, which are abundant:
I just can’t bear the thought of people being afraid of pears—and I truly believe that this sort of nervousness is a byproduct of the blithe food dictums we’re discussing today.
“Less is more” and “simple is best” are a couple of relatively innocent ones that nonetheless irritate me, especially when they are uttered by the same people who just told you that the dressing is more important than the salad. I think both issues depend on the salad. Can you imagine an iceberg wedge built according to the less-is-more decree—dressed in nothing but a simple vinaigrette? Sad! The wedge cries out for a blanket of overwrought blue cheese, among other complexities.
And consider the salad below (from a 24-year-old issue of “Gourmet”), which is probably the very salad that salad haters conjure in their minds when you offer them. . . a salad. It has no dressing to speak of.
Baby Greens with Olive Oil
Serves 8
1 pound mixed baby greens such as frisee, baby spinach or arugula, and Lolla Rosa
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
In a large bowl toss greens with oil and salt. Serve salad immediately.
Talk about simple. Is it “better” than all the other salads in the world? Who can say? But it’s sure as hell going to be a big letdown to anyone who shows up to your salad party expecting a luxurious Cobb salad or, God forbid, Salmagundi.
Either way, it happens to be one of the most glorious things I’ve ever eaten.—despite how often I have heard and read that you can’t have a good salad without a great dressing.
Blah blah blah. The simple truth is that ornate can also be great—and that a salad can inspire the dressing as much as a dressing inspires the salad. And in the end, how we feel about salad and so many other foods comes down to a vibe, a moment in time, our mood. So I choose to obey food rules about half the time, which is more than enough. But for today’s purposes, rather than continuing to be a contrarian I will admit that a good dressing can be extremely inspiring and that some of my salad idols have told me they always start with a dressing in mind.
And right now, as it’s starting to be cold and gray in so many places, we all need a little extra motivation, a little extra color. So, I have three vivid dressings meant to inspire you, too, whether your salads be plain or fancy.
Speaking of keeping it simple: all three are made by dropping your ingredients into a mini food processor and pressing a button. And the salad I have today, which I am calling Bird in a Nest, is made in your regular food processor. It is very lightly adapted from this Piñata Salad, which I came across while writing about how I’d fill my children’s birthday piñatas with salad if I actually had children. (I began wondering if there was such a thing as a piñata salad, and of course there was.) I love shredded vegetable salads—and the idea of serving one topped with avocado really appealed to me. So my adaptation was to give the original a real dressing and jalapeños. I hope you’ll try it—it’s just what I needed.
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