May/June 1988
By Carol Taylor
 |
©PHILIPPE-LOUIS HOUZE
|
Why cover your lively greens with a tired old sauce? With an assortment of oils and vinegars, you can design your dressings to suit yourself.
RELATED CONTENT
Remember vinegar and oil? The last two items at the end of a salad bar, neglected and disdained? Two cruets of pale liquid, indistinguishable except that one is sticky to the touch (oh, that's the oil ).
No more. In recent years, as more flavorful greens have begun to jostle the iceberg lettuce in our salad bowls, an array of condiments has joined the corn oil and cider vinegar on supermarket shelves: rich, luxurious oils, smooth, mellow vinegars. Combine them, and you have vinaigrette—that ancient and honorable sauce that moved Virgil to poetry, the finest accompaniment to greens yet devised.
At its simplest, vinaigrette is a mixture of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. There's only one rule—use three parts oil to one part vinegar—and a hundred good reasons to break it. With a stock of oils and vinegars on hand, and with a bit of the mad chemist in your heart, you can mix and match enough dressings to see you through a season of salads with little or no repetition.
Ideally, the oil and the vinegar will complement each other, the greens they cover, and the rest of the meal .
Vinegars
Vinegars (from the French vin aigre, or “sour wine”) results when an alcoholic liquid—wine, malted grain, cider, distilled alcohol—sours, or is infected with bacteria that convert alcohol to acetic acid. Remarkably varied in strength, flavor and character, they can be used singly or in combination.
Wine vinegars provide the richest store of salad dressings. Although brands differ (a few are harsh), generic red wine vinegars are full-bodied and mellow, able to stand up to the strongest oil. Caber-net Sauvignon vinegar is so good that every salad addict ought to own a bottle. Somewhat gentler than the reds, white wine vinegars are essential additions to the pantry. Chardon-nay and champagne vinegars offer faint but perceptible traces of their parents, sherry vinegar is stronger.
Distilled vinegar, probably the most common household variety, tastes strongly of acetic acid and nothing else. Harsh and highly acidic, it is invaluable for pickling, less useful for salads.
Cider vinegar tastes unmistakably of its apples of origin. Its distinctive flavor can overpower all but the strongest oils.
Rice vinegars, brown or white, are light, pleasant and mild, good with delicate greens and quiet oils. The brown variety is sweet, as well.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>
