The Department of Salad Dressing Room

A place for vinaigrettes, dressings, crunchy toppings, and other salad accoutrements to call their very own 👗 💍 💎 👖 🫙

Papaya Seed Dressing, from Aloha Kitchen

HERE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF SALAD, we try to give salad dressings their own time in the spotlight now and then. Since the earliest days of this bulletin, back in 2020, we’ve offered a few all- (or almost “all”) dressing issues. (You can click on them below 👇.)

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AND WE’VE SENT OUT A few free-agent recipes, too, when we’ve been particularly struck by a dressing and wanted to get it to you right away rather than wait until we had a salad to pair it with. (Here are a couple of examples to click on below, if you’d like ⬇️.)

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WE EVEN DID A COUPLE OF crouton-centric issues featuring recipes by Food & Wine editor Chandra Ram, whose inventiveness was rather dazzling. (See them? Below? ⬇️ You can click on them; why not?)

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ONCE WE OFFERED a Superseed Mix, to sprinkle on a roasted beet caprese salad, but you could sprinkle it on a lot of other dishes. (In the comments, readers suggested how you might keep the mozzarella from turning pink, the way mine did; I love DOS readers.) Click the link, right here 👇.

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LATELY, ESPECIALLY AFTER WE POSTED this sassy little dressing and it became such a hit, we’ve been thinking that the supplemental elements of salad-making—dressings, dipping sauces, croutons and other toppings—still get short shrift, not just in this newsletter but throughout all the land! And we have also begun to believe that the world might be as hungry for them as they are for full salads. (The boys in the lab expect to see this grand statement echoed soon in newspaper newsletters. We’re happy to help!)

So! The Dressing Room will be an occasional but enthusiastic feature of the Department of Salad, sent out as our fancies are struck, as a supplement to our regular two-recipe issues. Because it’s just so nice to have a jar of something exciting in the fridge, for those times when you just want to throw some reasonably compatible fruits and vegetables in a big bowl and bathe them in a dressing that will elevate them, and maybe top it all with some crunchy prizes. And all without taxing the culinary area of your brain too much.

A very beguiling vinaigrette made from passion fruit!

In conclusion! We have two dressings that rely on the same theory as that Fresh Peach Champagne Vinaigrette that all you salad monsters went wild for recently, which is this: Fruit in dressing very good! Grrrrrrr!

They also reflect my utter madness for papayas, which I eat almost every day some weeks in the summer. I keep trying to come up with a salad using ripe papayas—we did a sparky green papaya salad a while ago. But Cookie (my dog) and I end up eating all the papayas I buy the minute they’ve ripened—or I mess up the salad experiments again and again.

Luckily, I remembered a delicious-looking papaya vinaigrette that made me fold the page over in the terrific 2019 cookbook, Aloha Kitchen, by Alana Kysar. And that has satisfied my papaya in salad dreams, for now.

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DID YOU KNOW? It takes two kinds of lettuce (🥬 + $$) to keep the Department of Salad going. The best way to support us, if you don’t already: Press the green button (and get full access to all the salad in our enormous archive). Or give a gift!

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Kysar uses a Solo papaya, which is Hawaiian and harder to find than the larger varieties you see in most grocery stores and farmers markets. Solos are generally sweeter and have less muskiness, too. But I made an extremely delicious version using half of a larger Red Lady papaya once it had become very ripe and sweet, and it turned out just wonderfully. I am in love with this dressing. Sweet and tart and a great summer substitute for thicker or creamy dressings. Plus, it incorporates the pretty peppery black seeds, which I hadn’t even known you could eat.

And while I was at it, I also tried the liliko’i (passion fruit) vinaigrette from the same book and fell equally in love with it—it really enhances that madcap passion-fruit flavor in a way that I find entrancing. So I have that for you, too. But I highly recommend the entire book. And I highly recommend that you use your mini food processor to make both of these dressings if you have one.

I used 3 passion fruits to get the required ¼ cup of pulp for the Liliko’i (Passion Fruit) Vinaigrette, from Aloha Kitchen

Two other recommendations

In the newsletter department: I just love Jolene Handy’s Time Travel Kitchen, which features a cherry fool in the latest issue, just in case you’re still overstocked in the cherry department like I am. And I have loved and admired the Art of Eating for decades and am thrilled that Ed and Kimberly Behr are now on Substack; this week’s issue features a Sweet Corn, Cucumber, Basil, and Lime Salad I can’t wait to make.

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ONE MORE SMALL THING BEFORE YOU HIT THE RECIPES?

Would you mind hitting the ❤️ button at the top left or bottom left of this newsletter if you enjoy being here? It means more to us than you might imagine. XO—Emily

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*RECIPE: Papaya Seed Dressing, from Aloha Kitchen

Makes about ½ cup

ALANA KYSAR’S RECIPE NOTE: This is a multi-purpose dressing and sauce, and what I love about this one is its complexity: it has a buttery sweetness, thanks to the papaya, but with the kick of mustard and lime and a touch of texture from the addition of the seeds. It can be used much like dynamite sauce and creamy Asian dressing, on everything from salads to chicken.

• Flesh and seeds from 1 ripe Solo papaya

• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (NOTE FROM EMILY: I used 3)

• ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

• 1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped

• ¼  teaspoon kosher salt

• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• ¼ cup neutral oil

  In a blender, combine the flesh and seeds of the papaya with the lime juice, Dijon mustard, shallot, salt, pepper, sugar, and oil and process on high speed for 1 ½ to 2 minutes, until smooth. Use right away, or transfer to an airtight jar or bottle and store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Papaya Seed Dressing, From Aloha Kitchen

806KB ∙ PDF file

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*RECIPE: Liliko’i (Passion Fruit) Vinaigrette, from Aloha Kitchen

Makes about ½ cup

ALANA KYSAR’S RECIPE NOTE: Sweet, tart, and fragrant, this vinaigrette livens up even the dullest salad.

• ¼ cup liliko’i (passion fruit) pulp (NOTE FROM EMILY: this was 3 fruits for me)

• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar

• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• ¼ cup neutral oil or olive oil

• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt

• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

In a blender, combine the passion fruit pulp with the rice vinegar, mustard, sugar, oil, salt, and pepper and process on high speed for 2  to 3 minutes, until smooth. Use right away, or transfer to an airtight jar or bottle and store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Lilikoi (passion Fruit) Vinaigrette, From Aloha Kitchen

906KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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🥬 🥬🥬 🥬That’s It! We’re done here! We’ll see you soon with a recipe for Filets de Soles Bonne Femme. I’m kidding—it’s going to be salad.

🥬🥬🥬 ONE MORE THING: Please remember that while you may receive The Department of Salad as an e-mail, all issues of the newsletter—along with any corrections, the archive, and our Fancy New Recipe Index—are always available at the Department of Salad website. (You can always search “The Department of Salad” or go directly to emilyrnunn.substack.com.) All the recipes from all the newsletters will be there for you. To search the Index, simply use the search function (command F) that produces a search bar in the upper-right-hand corner of the page.

🥬 🥬ALSO, I’M WONDERING: Do you follow me on Instagram? My feed is not a consistent array of uniformly styled photos of perfect food, which I know is what I’m supposed to offer. But I get too bored. So it includes videos of giant pandas loudly eating carrots and personal crap representative of my bad personality. I’d love to have you. Go here: Emily’s Instagram

🥬 IN THE MEANTIME: If you feel like sharing the Department of Salad with friends or family who deserve it, please do so with the buttons below—it would mean the world to us! Thanks for being a subscriber.