There’s the finished product, a green salad with this unusual sauce on it, standing in as a salad dressing.

This post has a back story – but before you dismiss this recipe without knowing, this ubiquitous Italian sauce traditionally is lapped over thin slices of a veal roast, and contains canned (jarred) tuna. Don’t ewww over it. It’s quite amazing.

Suffer along with me as I jump back in time to the late 1980s, I think. My DH (dear husband Dave) and I were on a wonderful vacation in Europe. He’d gotten acquainted with Simone, his sales counterpart in Paris. She had stayed with us when she was here in California, and on more than one occasion she issued us an invitation for us to stay with her if we wanted to visit Paris for a few days. Well, sure we would!

A year or so later, after taking a lovely, long weekend driving trip visiting wineries and castles SW of Paris with her as our tour guide, we returned to her apartment (which had a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower, by the way) and I offered to prepare a meal the following evening. She begged me to make vitello tonnato, and she wanted to invite some American friends of hers who were living for a year in Paris. I hadn’t a clue what the dish was, but she had a recipe.

It’s available at amazon.

She went off to work and Dave and I went out to buy all the ingredients. One of her caveats was to be sure to use the leaves of her basil plant, a pitiful dried-up thing she had in a window in her rather bleak kitchen. Bear with me, here, but back in the late 80s I don’t think we Americans knew much about live basil. It wasn’t available except in dried form. Vitello Tonnato, as I mentioned above, is a very classic Italian dish of a veal roast, roasted ahead, cooled, then sliced thinly, plated decoratively on a platter, then this tuna sauce is poured over it. In her recipe, she wanted the sauce poured over whole room temp roast, and then garnished with basil. It all went well – except I forgot the basil. Let’s just say, she was upset. Such an important aspect of the recipe, she felt, and I’d forgotten to garnish the dish correctly. Lesson learned.

I vaguely remembered this sauce, but because we abhor eating veal here in the U.S., it never occurred to me it would be just as tasty served on a turkey breast, or even pork tenderloin, perhaps. Or to be used as a dip for raw veggies. A week or so ago I was reading a blog post from a foodie someone who has a pretty good following, and was quite unhappy when she said in order to see the recipe, I’d need to upgrade my subscription to paid. Nope, not doing that. So I researched, and found several recipes, and utilized the few clues that blogger had mentioned.

So there is the sauce, whizzled up in a food processor. Obviously, it’s messy. It takes awhile to puree this as the tuna is a meat. You do want it to be a sauce that is smooth.

Since I eat salad a LOT, it was the sauce used as a salad dressing that intrigued me. As I write this, I’ve just about finished the jar (above), having mixed it with a variety of salad greens and raw veggies.

Some of the recipes do use canned (not imported Italian) tuna, but I had one of those jars on my pantry shelf (picture above). Perhaps you don’t have to use the Italian, but for sure use oil-packed. Tuna here that’s dry packed, is so very dry.

Interestingly enough, none of the recipes I perused contained basil. Simone had insisted it was an important aspect. After that trip, we lost touch with Simone as she retired and moved to her home in Belgium. I’m glad I remembered about tonnato, however!

What’s GOOD: I just love this sauce. For me, it became the protein and dressing for my salad. It is reminiscent of a Caesar dressing. It has tons of flavor – and unless you know it’s tuna, you might not be able to figure it out.

What’s NOT: only if you don’t have some of that good jarred tuna (it’s available on amazon, BTW). I’ll be making this again, for sure.

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Lovely, lovely salad dressing. This one with basil.

With a prolific lemon tree (Meyer) and a small yellow lime tree in my garden, I’m always on the lookout for ways to use the fruit. When I saw this recipe in a recent Food & Wine issue, I saved it right away.

It was so easy to make – my lemon was very large, so I didn’t use all of it. You DO want to remove the seeds, but what fun to utilize the lemon rind in the dressing. I thought it would be bitter. Nope.

There is a balance, however, between the EVOO and the acidity of the lemon – hence I included wording in the recipe to make sure you get the right ratio. Every lemon yields a different amount of skin and juice. And I didn’t know with the inclusion of the rind whether it would throw off that balance. Just taste yours and add more lemon juice or more oil to make it right. I also thought the dressing would be quite puckery. Nope!  A nicely balanced dressing. With the basil in it, it’s almost more like a sauce. It would be nice on a piece of fish or chicken.

What’s GOOD: everything about it was good. Loved that I could use most of an entire lemon. I had fresh basil, so that’s the herb I added. The recipe suggests dill, chives or basil. Yes, I’ll be making this dressing again.

What’s NOT: nothing – other than it doesn’t keep for long. With the fresh basil, the dressing starts to deteriorate, even though it’s suspended in the oil/lemon juice, it still begins decaying, I suppose you could say. Use it up within a few days, no longer.

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A recipe from Sara . . . this is now on regular rotation at her home. Really tasty, slightly sweet dressing that’s ideal for serving on a salad with beets.

Sara made this salad one weekend when we were at the desert house – so refreshing. The little package of beets from Trader Joe’s, the ones that are already cooked and vacuum sealed – just buy one or two and keep them refrigerated until you need them.

This salad above was composed of arugula, fresh goat cheese (crumbled from a log of it), Persian cucumbers, fresh avocado, walnuts, beets, and some orange segments. And then the dressing.

Sara had a similar dressing at a restaurant and knew it contained maple syrup, so she devised the recipe herself – white wine vinegar, EVOO, the maple syrup and some Dijon mustard. Oh, and a dash of salt and pepper too. You can pour the dressing and toss the salad, but it’s so pretty when it’s composed as you see above in the salad bowl – the arugula peeking out from the edges, and then all the other ingredients piled up here and there. Drizzle the dressing over it all and then people can scoop what they’d like to have. Or mix it all up . . . your choice.

What’s GOOD: the combo of the salad ingredients (beets, walnuts, goat cheese, avocado, cucumbers, orange segments on a bed of arugula) is just perfect. The dressing is just slightly sweet – a perfect complement to the salad. My advice: double the recipe so you have some dressing leftover for another salad.

What’s NOT: only if you don’t have that package of Trader Joe’s beets on hand!

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Such a nice salad. Love the lightly sweetened cranberry juice salad dressing.

This recipe I’ve made a couple of times since Diane Phillips demonstrated it and served it at the December class she and Phillis Carey gave in early December. I made it the other day but decided not to do the fancy stuff with the pecans. Rather than coat them in a sweetened egg white mixture and roast them, I just toasted the pecans without. There are dried cranberries there (hard to see), and some nice chunks of goat cheese. And then the really delightful dressing.

I’d say the only down side to this salad is that you have to buy a bottle of cranberry juice cocktail. (Don’t use the diet type.) Didn’t they used to sell them in small cans? All I could get was as huge bottle of it. I’m glad I have family coming with little kids (my two great-grands) who will drink it up, I hope.

The dressing is easy-peasy to make. Just combine cranberry juice cocktail (not the diet type), sugar (I used part artificial sugar when I made it), rice vinegar (don’t use the seasoned type as that contains sugar), Dijon, salt, pepper and vegetable oil in a jar and shake. I used a mixture of field greens and arugula in the salad above. Ideally toss the salad with the dressing. If you’d like to, I think you could reduce the sugar just a little bit, to make it slightly less sweet. But not by much.

My friend Dianne and I were doing a fund-raising event for 10 people, so when I made it on this occasion, to save time about 10-15 minutes ahead we plated the greens, added the cranberries, pecans and goat cheese, then just before serving I drizzled the dressing on each plate of salad. The dressing should keep for a few weeks in the refrigerator.

What’s GOOD: love the dressing, slightly sweet. Make ahead. Very easy salad to put together. Easy to take to a party. Dressing will keep for a week or two.

What’s NOT: only that you’ll have to buy a bottle of cranberry juice cocktail. I don’t drink fruit juice anymore. Maybe around Thanksgiving or Christmas time they have it frozen in concentrate? Might have to look next fall. I’ll freeze a bit of the juice for the next time I want to make this.

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DRESSING ONLY: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

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Lovely roasted veggies enhanced with lemon juice in a vinaigrette.

Having shopped that morning and with numerous vegetables to choose from, I decided a sheetpan of roasted veggies sounded good for dinner. My complete dinner. But adding some kind of dressing would be even better, so I kind of made up a dressing with EVOO, a tad of red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice (my Meyer lemon tree is loaded, absolutely loaded with them), Dijon, a tiny bit of sugar, salt and pepper and some minced shallot.

After cutting up the veggies (one sweet potato, chunked large, 1 large sweet onion cut in wedges, about 12 Brussels sprouts, halved, one baby bok choy, cut into wedge thirds), I piled them onto a sheet pan lined with parchment. EVOO was drizzled over it and I used my hands to make sure every surface had been kissed by the oil. Then I added some salt and freshly ground black pepper, and it was ready. Into a 400°F oven it went for 35 minutes. If I’d wanted more caramelization I wouldn’t have used the parchment, but they were just done in that time frame (and the sheetpan was mostly clean). Meanwhile, I’d mixed up the vinaigrette, tasted it, and added a bit more oil. Once the veggies came out of the oven I put them onto my plate and drizzled (using a teaspoon) some of it over each piece of vegetable. That way, I hoped, I’d use less of the dressing (therefore fewer calories). So delicious. As I write this, I made the veggies last night, and at lunchtime today I couldn’t wait to have more of them. I reheated them in the microwave for a quick meal.

The recipe below makes more than you’ll need of the dressing – use what’s left on a green salad. Therefore, the calorie count in the actual recipe is way off. This is a mix-and-match kind of dish – don’t like sweet potatoes? Add white potatoes. Don’t like Brussels, add red, yellow and green bell peppers, cauliflower or eggplant. Don’t have sweet onion? No problem. Regular onions should work just fine. Add carrots to this – they’d be great – they become very sweet when roasted. I was trying to stick with low carb. Sweet potatoes are a resistant starch, so they don’t get absorbed by the body like most starches/carbohydrate. I have some portobello mushrooms and if I make this again in the next few days, I’ll add those, although they’d need the dark gills cleaned out  (otherwise the resulting dark fluid would spread over the other veggies – wouldn’t look pretty). I’m not a fan of cooked celery, but it probably would work here too. Regular cabbage would work too if cut into smaller wedges.

What’s GOOD: oh gosh, every veggie was wonderful. The vinaigrette just “made” it – it was the lemon juice that was the key to that. If you cut the veggies in somewhat even thickness they’ll all be done at the same time. Using parchment made for easy clean-up. The leftover vinaigrette I’ll use on a salad in the next few days. Absolutely wonderful dinner. If you wanted to serve it with a side of protein – a grilled chicken breast, or some rotisserie chicken, easy. A grilled pork chop maybe, or even a piece of fish. All good with the vegetables.

What’s NOT: only that you need to have the right combo of vegetables. Use what you have. No complaints here!

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A post from Karen: While a Honey Chipotle Chicken I can’t take credit for (thank you “Marinated” for making my life easy! –[a farmer’s market near where Karen lives]) was roasting in the oven I considered what sides I was going to serve with it. I wanted a salad or slaw to complement it and was reminded of El Torito Restaurant’s dressing with cilantro and pepitas. Alas, I was out of pepitas, but I did have pistachios on hand. Why not?! I continued rummaging through pantry and refrigerator for what would complete my dressing. I often pickle or freeze what I can’t use right away, and in this case I had some onion and red jalapeno pickles on hand. I also had some Yuzu hot sauce which would add a nice citrus component.

What’s good: – this came together very easily. I think the pickled elements of the onion and jalepeno really lended a wonderful layer of flavor to the dressing and negated the need for added salt or pepper. It was also a great use of the vinegar my onions were pickling in. The pistachio added a nice little crunch. I didn’t toast them, and would be curious to hear if you try it that way. The feta was a nice add as well, simply sprinkled on the top instead of incorporated in. I haven’t tried cotija cheese, but seems like it would work well, so let me know if you try that too!

What wasn’t – well, if you are trying to watch your calories, you may not like that I used heavy cream and mayonnaise. I did use light mayo for the second batch and that worked fine.
Bottom line – Hubby declared it the “best ever” slaw he’s ever tasted. It’s gotten rave reviews from everyone who has tried it so far and I find myself craving it now! Hope you enjoy it too!

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Can you tell I made this on the 4th of July?

I think I bought those salad servers for Sara about 10 years or so ago. They were perfect for this family gathering. See that lovely wedge of caramelized fennel in the center? THAT is the star of this dish, by far. If you’re not familiar with fennel, you should be. In its raw form I chop it up finely (or shave it with the peeler) in my regular green salads I have many nights of the week. Fennel has a kind of licorice taste – but it’s faint – don’t think licorice sticks at all. Once roasted, the fennel becomes smooth and satiny in flavor. Me-loves-fennel either raw or roasted!

Here’s the sheetpan of fennel, bacon and pancetta:

Salad: In this case I had baby spinach, arugula and some Romaine for the salad. The fennel, bacon (and pancetta, as I had both), garlic, brown sugar (I used Monkfruit), olive oil, salt and pepper are tossed together, then roasted on a sheetpan for about 30-40 minutes. You want the bacon to be crispy. After roasting let the pan sit out until you’re ready to dress the salad.

Meanwhile, make the simple red wine vinegar-lemon juice-honey and oil dressing. SOOO good all on its own, but it’s the perfect counterpoint to the salad. When you’re ready to serve, combine all the salad greens in the bowl, toss with some of the dressing, then add in the fennel and bacon (and pancetta), and add more dressing until just the right balance. Taste for salt and pepper (I don’t think it needed either). Serve immediately. My notes say that Phillis Carey made this at a cooking class. I don’t know why I never told you about this recipe before – since it’s so good! I found the recipe online (Giada) although she used only pancetta in her salad. Hence, since I had both bacon and pancetta, I used some of both.

What’s GOOD: oh, this salad was so unctuous. The fennel is the star, as I mentioned above. You’ll wish you had 3 or 4 wedges of it on your salad portion, it’s that good. The sturdy greens were perfect for the salad and the red wine vinegar dressing was just right to cut the richness of the bacon. Must of salad can be readied ahead of time.

What’s NOT: nothing, really. You do have to prep the fennel and roast the bacon and fennel together – that takes a bit of time, but it’s time well spent when you taste the finished salad.

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A tart, but not overly so red wine vinegar and lemon juice type, with a tiny bit of honey. And Dijon. And red chile flakes.

Over the years I’ve certainly had my fair share of very tart, puckery Italian and Greek salad dressings – at restaurants always. And haven’t always been a fan. One Italian place I frequented in years past served such a tart red wine vinegar dressing that I couldn’t eat it. Just couldn’t. Literally, I would choke and cough because it had too much vinegar. Ever had that problem? So when I volunteered to make Greek salad dressing for a potluck luncheon recently I was determined no one would erupt in a choking fit. I perused lots of recipes, and settled on one at Simply Recipes. Why that one? Because it had a tiny little bit of honey in it. And I felt that the ratio of acid (red wine vinegar and lemon juice) to oil (EVOO) was better than some.

The other nice thing about this dressing is that you can mix it up in a screw-top jar – no blender required. I minced up the garlic (lots) really well. I used fresh lemon juice (a must) and I used a good EVOO. This recipe has both red wine vinegar AND lemon juice. I liked that also. It had a little jot of Dijon in it, some red pepper flakes too (not necessarily standard). The ONLY thing I did differently was to add more dried oregano. And I doubled the recipe because I was serving a bunch of people. Other people were bringing the Romaine, the Kalamata olives, the cucumbers, Feta, and halved cherry tomatoes.

What’s GOOD: good, garlicky and not too stringent because of the ratio of acid to EVOO, and because of the tiny bit of honey. Love the flavors from the oregano and red chile flakes. Altogether delicious dressing. A keeper.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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This may not look like much. Is a vinaigrette just a vinaigrette? For sure, no. This one is a stand-out.

A post from Carolyn. It’s been awhile now that I’ve been a fan of Erin French, the not-classically-trained chef from Freedom, Maine. Have I been to her restaurant, The Lost Kitchen? Uh, no. It’s a bit of a fur piece for me to get there, so I haven’t tried. Would I like to – oh yes. I wish my DH Dave were still alive – he’d be “all in” to fly across the country to go to dinner there, then we’d visit some other Maine sites we’ve not been to. The website says there are still reservations available for this summer season. But you don’t just call to get a reservation – you have to send a postcard to the restaurant in order to eat there – and the staff picks postcards. They receive thousands of postcards – in fact they get so many it’s kept the Freedom, Maine post office open when it was about to be closed for lack of business. All of her employees are ordinary folk, none of them experienced in the restaurant trade. She trained them and they’re a really good team. She’s married again – to a wonderful guy, I think.

I believe a couple of her TV segments appeared on Magnolia, but I could be mistaken. I subscribe to Discovery+, and that’s where her seasons of shows appear. I believe I’ve watched them all. She’s so very creative, using lots of local ingredients. She has quite a story to tell. A few months ago I was gifted her cookbook, The Lost Kitchen, and I’ve read the book, cover to cover. Then I ordered her memoir, Finding Freedom – that one’s the story of her life, working in the family diner, learning how to flip burgers and fries at a very young age; about some of her disastrous decisions, having a son out of wedlock, marrying the wrong man, conquering her addiction to pills. There’s a section about outfitting a derelict Airstream trailer which became her re-start to this new restaurant – and her phenomenal success. My guess is it’s very expensive to eat there. And by the way, they now have a few tiny cottages for people to stay in for one night, if you’re fortunate enough to get a phone call from them saying it’s your lucky day. The cottages were private dining rooms during a part of Covid, then they were converted to cottages. The Lost Kitchen is open in the late spring to mid-autumn only. The tv show chronicles the restaurant’s bare survival during Covid. But above all, Erin French is a genius in the kitchen. I have about a dozen recipes flagged in the cookbook, to try. Beyond this one, of course.

Her shallot vinaigrette comes up often in her food presentations – as a drizzle on roasted vegetables, or featured in some kind of salad. And this dressing is so terrifically simple. I prefer it once it’s allowed to sit for awhile – so the shallot mellows a little bit – they (shallots) aren’t quite so stringent if you let them bathe in the vinegar for half an hour. The seasoned rice wine vinegar adds just a touch of sweetness (it does have sugar in it, but not much). And that’s where I veered off just a tiny bit – I added a little bit more sugar. Like a half a teaspoon, or even less. Use your own judgment about this. Or if you’d prefer, make it her way before you add more sugar. Picture above showing one of my frequent green salads (dinner) with carrots, celery, sugar snaps, radicchio, Romaine, tomatoes, radishes. My salads are about equal part vegetables to Romaine.

What’s GOOD: so easy and very tasty dressing. So easy, in fact, that once you make it you’ll not have to use a recipe – just drizzle and pour in the rice vinegar over the shallots, and then oil.

What’s NOT: nothing I suppose, except that you need to have a shallot on hand – I always do. They keep on my kitchen counter for weeks.

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So simple and easy to make at the last minute. Love serving anything on that tomato plate I bought in Cortona, Italy about 10 years ago, which I wedged carefully into my suitcase to bring home.

A post from Carolyn.  A week or so ago I’d bought a container of burrata cheese, with no particular plans for it. As it sat in the frig for several days, I decided one day at lunchtime that I should make a salad with part of it.

Here at left is the salad I made for lunch. I knew I wouldn’t eat all of the burrata (it was 8 ounces) but it looked so pretty on the plate. For myself I added one Roma tomato, one egg, quartered, and I opened a package of the vacuum-sealed cooked beets (from Trader Joe’s). Then I went out into my garden and cut some fresh basil, which I sliced up and sprinkled on top, then I drizzled some lemon white balsamic vinegar and EVOO on top. Finally, I added freshly ground black pepper and Maldon flake salt.

Oh my. It was SO delicious. It was so good, in fact, that I made it as a side salad (the picture at top) for dinner. I cut up the half of the burrata that was remaining, added avocado to the plate too (didn’t use the egg as we were already having a protein for dinner) and drizzled again with the same dressing. For dinner I also gathered some mint and added it to the basil.

There at right you can see the same lunch plate with the oozy burrata after I’d cut into it. Oh so good.

For dinner I’d made a ground beef casserole and it was just ho-hum, so I won’t be posting that recipe. But this salad was a hit – with me, of course, with granddaughter Taylor and with my friend Judy who came to share it with us.

What’s GOOD: everything about this was sensational. So seasonally good, the fresh oozy, gooey cheese, the tomatoes, even the beets.

What’s NOT: nothing whatsoever.

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