Basic Salad

There is absolutely no reason to pollute the planet by buying those bottles of salad dressing that taste like salt and chemicals from the forbidding aisles of the supermarket.

A basic salad dressing for four is two tables spoons vinegar, two tables spoons oil, and salt to taste.

Use less on delicate leaves like butter lettuce. Start with a tablespoon each olive and vinegar and salt, toss, taste a leaf and add more as needed.

I use Four Monks vinegar from San Francisco. Its a distilled vinegar from wine. For a more complicated dressing back off the basic vinegar and add proportionally balsamic, rice, lemon or a combination for heavier salad leaves like romaine, arugula, or winter greens. I grow my lemons and when I need more I ask my neighbors. Balsamic is available at our farmer’s market from Big Paw. A teaspoon of balsamic will change the dressing considerably.

Olive oil is also found at the farmers market also from Big Paw. There are more vinegars and olive oils at the Saturday Farmer’s Market at San Mateo City College. For a more complicated dressing back off the olive oil and add proportionally sesame or walnut oil or whatever takes your fancy.

These oils and vinegars bring more to the kitchen than the store bought dressings. Given the strange world of corporations he vinegars and oils we don't get from the farmers market come from www.mizkan.com

The basic dressings works on everything and brings out the flavor of fresh cut salad leaves.