I go through phases of feeling the need to write and then once it's out of my system it can be a while before it sweeps over me again.
Today, I just felt like having a wee chat about salad dressings. As one does!
Supermarkets are choc-a-bloc with every kind of salad dressing you can think of: creamy ones, low fat ones, spicy, citrus, herby, fruity... there's just hundreds of the damn things - and the price of some of them, ooft!!! But my favourite is a good glug of rapeseed oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some cider vinegar (about 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar as a guide), a blob of dijon mustard, some salt and pepper then give it a whisk together or put it in a container with a lid and just give it a good shake. Tastes better than the bottled stuff and if you have the stuff in the house anyway it costs pennies to make.
Have a play around with it to see what you like: try different oils, even flavoured oils. I like rapeseed as, aside from just preferring the flavour, it's homegrown and it has around half the saturated fat of olive oil. There's loads of vinegars, red or white wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar make great dressings too. Maybe switch to wholegrain mustard, add a teaspoon of honey, pop in some garlic or ginger... the possibilities are endless!
I just finished a bottle of my lovely lemony mustardy one so I don't have any decent photos but here's our lunch from my birthday last week, I wanted a plate full of my favourite things! We had quesadillas filled with buffalo mozarella, chorizo and taleggio cheese, plus a salad of baby leaves, watercress, spinach, rocket, figs, olives, feta cheese, baby plum tomatoes, grated carrot, and lemony mustardy dressing - a bit of a mish mash on a plate but perfect!! Salad has come a long way from the lettuce, tomato and cucumber with a blob of salad cream (although I do LOVE salad cream!!), put whatever you love into it. You get really good jars of veg in oil in pretty much any supermarket now: roasted peppers, artichokes, mixed mushrooms - all sorts. Give them a go, bung a few in with a bag of mixed leaves, put a bit of home made dressing on, just enough to coast the leaves but not drown them, and see what you like.
Other things you might like in your salads are grains - quinoa, couscous, bulgar wheat etc are so readily available these days, and although fairly plain in taste they do take on the flavour of other things well. I love cous cous with red onion, coriander, fresh chilli, lime juice and a bit of salt and pepper in it - pretty much fresh salsa mixed with cous cous. But that's lovely mixed in with salad leaves too.
Salad doesn't have to be dull, even with something in it a bit more calorific like a bit of feta and a bit of oil based dressing you can still pack it full of vitamins, antioxidants and all sorts of good stuff. And just because cheeses and oils are higher in calories and fat, remember that there are good fats out there!
Hope you are all having a wonderful summer, we certainly are!
