Put those salad tongs down.

You’re not going to put that mass-market, processed dressing on that salad that you just spent a half-hour prepping from fresh farmer’s market veggies, are you?

If you’re trying to eat less processed food, salad dressing is a great place to start. Despite the fact that they’re often loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and colorings, the top 5 salad dressing brands sell over $1.5B of highly-processed. Most of us, even after spending the time to carefully choose, wash, chop, and prep our organic veggies will glop on some squeeze-bottle dressing to dress up our salads. What’s worse, is that because the mainstream salad dressings are so bland and sugary, we end up using more than we need.

But, if you know the ratios, you can make an endless number of variations without ever consulting a recipe, in five minutes or less. What’s more, when you use good ingredients, the flavors are so intense and delicious, you’ll find yourself using less dressing.

Just remember this ratio for the classic vinaigrette – 1 part vinegar (or lemon) to 3 parts oil (or in chef-speak, 3:1 fat to acid). 

One of my go-to recipes for a weeknight is a kale-caesar salad. The dressing couldn’t be easier – 1 oz of fresh lemon juice, 3 oz of extra-virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of good quality dijon mustard (which helps emulsify the dressing and rounds out the flavor), salt, pepper, and a clove of garlic. Whisk. Enjoy.

Once you know the ratio, you’re only limited by your creativity. Balsamic vinaigrette? 1 oz balsamic vinegar, 3 oz extra virgin olive oil, half a minced shallot, salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of dijon. Whisk.

What about a creamy dressing? Use a little less oil, say 2 oz of olive oil, with 1 oz of lemon juice,and add 1/2 cup of greek yogurt. Toss in some fresh parsley and fresh basil, salt, pepper, and blend. Bob’s your Uncle.

Like anything, the vinaigrette ratio is a guideline. You may need a bit more oil if you have particularly sharp and acidic lemons, or a little less if you’re using a mild vinegar. Experiment, and as always when you’re cooking – taste, then taste again.

Finally, a couple pro-tips (not that I’m a pro, nor have I played one on TV, but I read and listen to the pros) – treat yourself to a good extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO). Most of the stuff at the grocery store is fake, or at least heavily blended with other oils. It’s scandalous. Look for EVOO with a harvest date, and buy locally if you can. California is making some incredible olive oils. Rule of thumb – if it’s less than $8-$10/liter, it’s probably fake. There’s no way you can buy real olive oil from Spain or Italy, package it, and import it for less. Same goes for Dijon mustard, which is a great emulsifier and adds wonderful flavor to dressings, just don’t get the mass-market, sad-excuse for Dijon, Dijon. Splurge a little and get a Dijon that’s actually made in France. You’ll only go through a jar a month or two, so live a little.

Stay tuned. Next time we’ll tackle the other factory-produced food staple – breakfast cereals.

 

 

 

 

Fermentation is one of the hot new food trends in 2016 (never mind that it’s thousands of years old – that’s a topic for another post). While fermentation can produce funky, sour, and mouth-watering flavors, many of the new fermented foods showing up on the shelves of natural-food markets focus more on the health benefits than taste, and their soggy, over-fermented taste and strange mouthfeel are more about choking down your probiotics than being a delicious snack or aperitif.

Thankfully, restaurants like Noma and now GYST in Minneapolis applying culinary arts to fermentation, and fermenting to bring new and surprising flavors to the plate.

I was fortunate to find myself in Minneapolis on business this week, and I make it a point to leave enough time to seek out interesting restaurants on every trip. Prior to heading to Pizzeria Lola for their Korean BBQ Pizza and house-made kimchi (another great reason to visit Minneapolis), I headed over to GYST Fermentation Bar for a sampler of their fermented vegetables and a local beer or two.

Hashtag worththeflighttoMSP.

Every vegetable on their pickle plate, which changes seasonally, maintained it’s crunch and it’s underlying flavor, while being full of sour goodness. My favorite was the yellow beets with orange, which had just enough earthy beet flavor, natural sweetness, and hint of orange balanced with tart and sour. The fennel was also amazing – much more amazing than the last batch I made at home, leaving me slightly jealous of their fermentation kung fu.

I also couldn’t resist the Sandor, named after fermentation guru Sandor Katz – peanut butter on focaccia topped with kimchi and fresh green onion. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it’s delicious – peanut butter and kimchi make a surprising couple.

The mad geniuses at GYST are doing amazing things, and I hope it brings the delights and wonders of fermentation to a wider audience. Definitely check it out next time you’re in Minneapolis.

A new villain has been named, and it is sugar. If you’re keeping score, fat, once the key scapegoat of modern nutrition, is now ok.

A rash of recent studies, articles, and documentaries tell us to avoid sugar and carbs at all costs. They assert that sugar is the root of our health problems and the root cause of the obesity epidemic in North America, but they are only partly right. I fear that the reductionist thinking that led us to the war on fat, will lead us to other health issues in the war on sugar and carbohydrates.

About 40 years ago, we were told to avoid all fat. They key to good health was a low-fat diet, the experts claimed. A wave of low-fat and no-fat foods followed – no-fat dairy, low-fat potato chips, even low-fat bacon. Eggs were deemed evil, especially egg yolks. Now, evidence is emerging that many of the early studies that vilified fat, and created a 40-year low-fat food trend, were dubious at best. Fat is in.

The low-fat movement had unintended consequences. In many cases, sugar took the place of fat, and without fat to slow the absorption of the added sugar, we accelerated health problems like diabetes. We also invented trans fats (because real fat was evil), and got so good at creating artificial flavors that processed food became more craveable than real food (for a great book on this subject, read Mark Schatzker’s Dorito Effect).

We are headed down the same path with carbohydrates.

In the US, we love to simplify and conquer complex systems. We love the magic bullet. The food industry loves magic bullets even more, as it gives them a whole new growth segment to ride. The trouble is, we don’t really understand what goes on inside our bodies, but we keep trying to manufacture new foods to conquer our health issues.

And therein lies the problem. Not fat, not carbohydrates, but processed food. Even worse, processed food passed off as healthy food, and our grocery store aisles are full of them. We’re obsessed with trying to reduce our food to it’s macro and micro nutrients, and reassemble them in new convenient forms. That, I will wager, is what our bodies are having trouble coping with, and is what’s making us sick.

In the meantime, I’m going to stick with real food, and in twenty years, when nutritionists exonerate sugar, drop by and we’ll have some homemade pancakes and real maple syrup. And bacon. I love bacon.