Wednesday, October 30, 2013

HERBED HONEY LIME SALAD DRESSING, GRILLED CORN CHOPPED SALAD

This is easily the best salad dressing I have ever made! And I've always made salad dressing myself, I never buy it. This dressing truly dresses up a salad, with clean ingredients and bright flavours! Best of all, it's quite a forgiving recipe so you can vary the quantities of ingredients however you prefer.

Although, I wouldn't do anything insane like adding parsley instead of mint or - heaven forbid - herbs like rosemary, sage, tarragon and all that. That would be nothing short of a travesty of this dressing!

If you're making the salad too: roasted corn is important in the salad. It rounds everything out with its smokiness. In corn season I buy a bunch of corn, roast it on my gas burner stove top, shave off the kernels, and freeze for use later. That is of course better than frozen store-bought roasted corn, but really, Trader Joe's frozen roasted corn is quite up to par. So definitely use that if you want or have to.




Herbed Honey-Lime Salad Dressing
Makes: approximately 12 oz.

- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
- 1/8 cup fresh juice from navel, tangerine, or mandarin oranges
- 1/8 cup olive oil
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 cup fresh cilantro, roughly torn and including tender stems
- 1 cup fresh mint, roughly torn and including tender stems
- 1/2 jalapeño pepper
- 1 garlic clove, peeled
- 1 tsp good quality salt
- 1/4 cup or more water as needed to blend to a smooth, easily pourable, liquid consistency

1. Put everything in a blender or smoothie mixer and blend to a smooth consistency.
2. While still in the blender, taste the dressing and adjust flavours to your taste. Blend again to make sure it's all smooth.
3. Enjoy over salad leaves, roasted vegetables, raw vegetables, rice and raw vegetable salad, or a mixed chopped salad like below...

Grilled Corn Chopped Salad
Makes: a lot, or approximately 10 cups

1. Mix in a bowl small-medium sized dice of:

- 1 cup yellow or red onion
- 1 cup jicama
- 3 Persian cucumbers
1 cup capsicum of any colour
- 1 cup carrots

2. Add
- 1 cup celery, sliced not diced
- 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
- 1 cup kernels from grilled corn (or use Trader Joe's frozen grilled corn)

3. Toss with three quarters of the salad dressing, adding more if required.

4. Enjoy on its own or as a salsa with tortilla chips! Or stuffed in a pita, as a soft taco with corn tortillas, with a bit of rice on the side, or filled in endive spears.

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