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Filed under things I must make (soon): How To Make Confetti Compost Cookies
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Filed under things I must make (soon): How To Make Confetti Compost Cookies
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Vinaigrettes are essential to making summer dishes more delicious. Obviously they make lettuces and veggies taste great, but they are capable of way, way more. Vinaigrettes serve as ideal marinades for proteins, turn room temperature grains into satisfying meals, and transform a bowl of chopped up fruit into a luscious dessert. Best of all: they’re dead fucking simple to put together.
Every vinaigrette recipe is a variation on a single template: three parts oil carefully whisked into one part acid. From there, you simply plug and play your favorite tangy liquids with your favorite fats, adding in bits of spices and sweeteners to best suit your fancy and/or your dish.
To improve on the formula, we like to add an emulsifying agent, like mustard, to help keep the dressing stable. That means no more bites of greasy lettuce because your vinaigrette broke and no more careful whisking— you can just throw that shit into a jar and shake it. Laziness-enabling aside, using emulsifiers changes the texture and that makes it taste better. It brings ingredients to your tongue at the same time and lets each of their contrasting qualities simultaneously enhance and restrain the others. The result is consistently unctuous and savory and bold vinaigrettes— instead of dressing that’s occasionally, and unpleasantly, greasy, salty, or astringent.
We’ve shared a few of our favorite recipes below— give them a try and certainly keep your eyes peeled this week for some pretty pictures of what we like to do with them— but don’t be afraid try this out on your own. Vinaigrette is a relatively low-cost, low volume investment for fucking around in the kitchen that yields high-impact flavors and can change a meal for the better. Mess with your favorite flavors and make something all your own.
Classic Balsamic Vinaigrette
Great for green side salads but possibly better as a marinade for grilled chicken.
- (the oil) 3/4 cup Olive Oil
- (the acid) 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
- (the emulsifier) 1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
- 2 tsp of bruised Thyme leaves
- A pinch of Salt and plenty of Black Pepper
Lemon Poppy Seed Vinaigrette
Particularly rad on melons.
- (the oil) 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
- (the acid) Juice from 1 Lemon
- (the emulsifier) 1 tbsp Greek Yogurt
- 1-2 tbsp Honey
- 1 tsp Poppy Seed
- A pinch of ground Cinnamon (optional)
- A pinch of Salt
Sesame Miso Vinaigrette
On cold noodles, rice pilaf, or a nice thick piece of fish before it hits the pan.
- (the oil)1/3 cup Peanut Oil
- (also the oil)1 tbsp Sesame Oil
- (the acid) 3 tbsp Rice Wine Vinegar
- (also the acid) 1 Lime, juice only
- (the emulsifier) 2 tbsp Miso Paste
- 1 thinly sliced Scallion
- 1 tsp Sesame Seeds
This popsicle set is one of the best impulse buys I’ve made. Seriously. I have a lot of fun trying to create delicious concoctions from whatever we have around the house…some aren’t so successful. But these however are on the success list! They are super easy to make and fuel my coconut obsession.
Coconut Nutella Popsicles
1 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup nutella
3+ tablespoons shredded coconut
Honey Coconut Popsicles
2 cups coconut milk
3 tablespoons honey
3+ tablespoons shredded coconut
Instructions:
Mix the various ingredients in a small mixing bowl and pour into your molds (each recipe makes 3-4). After about an hour in the freezer, insert your popsicle stick and return to freezer until ready to serve. At this point, I also added more shredded coconut to the bottoms of each popsicle because it looks even tastier.
If you need molds, these are pretty cool and I’ve heard wonders about the Zoku Popsicle molds. I also found some at World Market and Bed Bath & Beyond.
Watermelon Margaritas (from Anthropologie)
Ingredients:
3 cups fresh seedless watermelon pulp
1 cup fresh lime juice
2 cups simple syrup
1 1/2 cups premium silver tequila
1/2 cup triple sec
3 cups iceInstructions:
Place watermelon in a bowl and use a potato masher to extract as much juice as possible. Transfer pulp and juice to a pitcher and add lime juice, simple syrup, triple sec and tequila. Stir. Add 3 cups of ice and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Stir and serve over ice (& in Anthro’s settled confetti glasses).
Creamy mashed cauliflower (via Sprout & Pea, eatallthethings)
Spoiler alert: it gets its creaminess from Greek yogurt and its yumminess from Parmigiano.
Asparagus and Herb Lasagna with olive oil béchamel. Tell me that doesn’t sound immensely satisfying. (And for some reason it’s filed under “Recipes for Health”…?)
From the NYT’s roundup of asparagus recipes.
