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| Fresh Salads and Dressings from Scratch |
Ever read the ingredients on a salad dressing bottle from the grocery store? We recently looked at the back labels on some popularly available dressings and found things like xantham gum, sodium benzonate, calcium disodium EDTA, sulfur dioxide, and caramel coloring.
"If you take the time to read the ingredient labels on those bottles, you'd find water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, salt, all manner of chemicals and  gums to make them shelf stable," chef and cookbook author Joyce Goldstein says. "You want to throw it away."
We'd love to hear your thoughts, too. And we'd love to see your own salad recipes. So we're sponsoring a recipe contest on Facebook with great prizes. First prize for this month's winning original salad recipe is valued at $1,300. It includes a a $500 Viking Cooking School gift redeemable for classes at their schools across the nation or online at VikingRange.com for any culinary products, accessories and outdoor appliances sold on the Website. We'll also have the top recipe professionally photographed and featured on our website. (Click here to go to the contest.)
The contest is part of our brand new Seasons Best program. We'll periodically feature a culinary topic - in this case, homemade salads and dressings. We'll also focus on the topic in a special series of blogs called Fresh Creations, where we'll interview chefs and feature recipes that showcase our seasonal themes.
And we'll focus on one of our extra virgin olive oils that pairs well with our featured recipes. We look at Arbequina in an article below.
Creating fresh summertime salads and dressings has never been so easy using vegetables, fruits, herbs, and other ingredients from the seasonal bounty.
"You know every single ingredient that's going into it," Goldstein says of homemade dressings. "There are no weird ingredients."
Creating your own dressing takes just a few minutes.
"My favorite salad dressing is actually just lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. You can't buy that in a bottle!" says Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin, co-owner of Tavern, Lucques, and AOC.
Award-winning cookbook author Marie Simmons calls homemade dressings "so much fresher."
"Fresh lemon juice and great tasting California Olive Ranch olive oil," she advises. "Add fresh garlic, or not, and just the amount of pure sea salt to taste."
For the salad, look around your local farmer's market or produce section for inspiration. You can use: vegetables like green beans, cucumbers, and grilled eggplant; fruits such as peaches, figs, and berries; cheeses like feta or goat; or meat and seafood, from grilled chicken to steak or tuna.
How to make your own salad? 
"Depending on how adventuresome you are, it might be best to start by riffing on recipes that you know and love already by changing out ingredients - such as grilling instead of braising, etc.," says Goin, who also co-owns with her chef husband three Hungry Cat restaurants in Hollywood, Santa Barbara and Santa Monica.
"But if you have a vision in your head, just go for it," she adds. "Also, it's okay to look up other recipes to get some ideas." (See our featured salad recipes below.)
Simmons advises home cooks to "keep it simple and seasonal." During the summer, she adds "let your imagination run wild."
As for the dressing, you can start by using the classic 3-1 ratio of extra  virgin olive oil to an acid like vinegar or lemon juice. Simmons recommends "a generous pinch" of coarse salt. "It dulls the bitter receptors on the sides of your tongue, and tones down the acid flavor of the vinegar or lemon juice."
Goin says if she's making a basic dressing of lemon, vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, "I just drizzle it right onto the salad instead of mixing a vinaigrette."
And remember: Taste your dressing beforehand. Dip a piece of lettuce in and taste to see if you need more oil, acid, salt, etc. "Always taste," Simmons says. "It's an important part of the cooking process."
Throughout July, look for more to come from our Seasons Best program, including:
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| Our Favorite Salad Recipes |
Warm Green Bean and Tomato Salad with Mint
Recipe credit: Fresh & Fast Vegetarian (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)
Reprinted with permission from the publisher
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Mediterranean Steak Salad
Recipe courtesy of The New Sonoma Cookbook by Dr. Connie Guttersen (Sterling Publishing, 2011) |
| Culinary Primer: Arbequina Olive Oil |
Our Arbequina extra virgin olive oil is a natural for salad dressings. It delivers a  very fresh and fruity taste. The flavor notes include tropical fruit and fresh artichoke.
Arbequina is a "delicate" extra virgin olive oil versus, say, more "robust" oils like our Limited Reserve or Miller's Blend. They're more peppery, and deliver a more noticeable "tickle" in your throat. Delicate oils have a slight bitterness and fruitiness. Most oils we produce fall into this category.
We also find Arbequina works well in everything from brownies and pound cake to ice cream. Cookbook author and olive oil expert Fran Gage suggests the following food pairings for delicate oils like Arbequina:
- As a substitute for butter when baking cakes and cookies. (Replace four parts butter with three parts olive oil - so 4 Tablespoons of butter become 3 Tablespoons olive oil.)
- For all-purpose mayonnaise and mashed potatoes
- With tender salad greens
- Drizzled over meats to bring out the sweetness of the meat
- With dishes that use blue cheese
 - For "strong" pestos such as one made from wild arugula
- With tomatoes that aren't quite ripe
- In dishes with strong tastes and components, such as smoked fish/salted cod
Our Arbequina also is among our specialty oils, along with Arbosana and Miller's Blend. Think of these oils like wines, such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. Both wines come from particular grapes - Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.
Some wines, meanwhile, are special blends of grapes. Ditto for our Miller's Blend, only it combines different olive varietals.
Our Arbequina is crushed from the Arbequina olive, a Spanish varietal which hails originally from Catalonia, in Spain. It has become a favorite among growers here in the Golden state.
A 2009 report from the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis, found that Arbequina accounts for 78% percent, or 9,400 acres, of California's olive trees that are grown using a method known as "super high density" planting.
The Arbequina tree is relatively small. It has weeping branches. The oval-shaped olives the tree produces are small. Yet this little olive resists frost well. It ripens relatively early versus other varietals.
In Europe, you can sometimes find an Arbequina olive tree in a pot at the front entrance of cafés.
As for us, we particularly like the oil this little olive produces.
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Stay Healthy in 2011 with California Olive Ranch!
Email your comments to enews@cal-olive.com.
We want to hear from you!
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