We eat salad at least a couple of times a week and we have a standard format for them.  They are always the same: cut up romaine, baby spinach, shredded carrot, sliced mushroom, broccoli, avocado, occasionally hard boiled eggs.  Waldo uses a Parmesan ranch dressing and olives.  I add hemp seeds and 1000 island dressing.  We have both wanted to try different dressings, but I’m picky and have been putting off finding something new.  We haven’t gotten tired of the salad yet, and frankly we are both surprised by that.  Oh well.

So I was going through How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and found a good simple vinaigrette.  I couldn’t wait to try it.  Like I said on the pasta sauce post Mark Bittman makes good base recipes with a lot of variations listed.  We loved the vinaigrette and can’t wait to try some different versions.

I made some changes to fit our likes, but it’s a really good base recipe.  I’ll add my changes at the end.

Vinaigrette

adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

1/2 cup good EVOO

3 tablespoons of a good wine vinegar, plus some to taste

salt and pepper

1 large shallot cut into chunks (optional)

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Put the EVOO and vinegar in the cup of a immersion blender and spin.  It should get creamy in about 30 seconds or so.  Add salt and pepper and taste.  Adjust with more seasoning and 1 teaspoon of vinegar at a time if necessary.

Add shallot and blend again.  Taste again and serve.

Waldo and I both loved it and I really appreciate that Bittman give a lot of variations for most of the recipes. I can’t wait to try some vinaigrette versions.

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I used:

Sherry vinegar which Bittman recommends and I agree with.

1/2 large shallot

Followup:

A few days after trying this vinaigrette we tried it again with a teaspoon of mustard as was suggested in the variations and we hated it.  Hated. It.