Small Win #14: The salad dressing that my friends go WILD for

Just 3 ingredients + v useful for upping your veg quota!

Welcome to Small Wins, a newsletter that shares a small win with you every other week — one that has the power to improve your cooking, your home, your life. It’s great to have you here!

Happy New Year! Welcome back! A whole year of Small Wins is ahead of us and I have so many gems to share with you.

Today it’s a quick one, but a goodie: the 3-ingredient salad dressing that my friends go wild for. I once handed over a large jar of this dressing as a housewarming gift and it was met with squeals of delight.

Part of the magic of this vinaigrette is its compelling combination of sweetness and sourness. Most of the green things that feature in salads (lettuces, kale, celery, broccoli, olives, herbs) have a degree of bitterness and this dressing brings that feature into balance, helping even the most bitter radicchios and chicories shine.

As we head into January and find ourselves seeking brighter, fresher fare following the indulgences of December, this is a fantastic recipe to have up your sleeve — one that will convert even the most ardent vegetable-hater.

Love,
Alexina

Coming up on Small Wins — The best chocolate sauce happens to be vegan. The delicious and nutritious 20-minute meal that I make every week. Two things you must do with blood oranges.

For my Small Wins+ community — This month expect a 101 on cooking vegetarian food and next month, in honour of V-Day, I’ll be sharing two gorgeous menus to cook on date-night: a cosy one for winter and a flirty one for summer.

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A VERY USEFUL FLAVOUR HACK

White balsamic vinegar, along with some other favourites!

Balsamic vinegar was a novelty in the 80s, a ubiquitous glaze on every restaurant salad in the 90s and a kitchen cupboard stalwart by the 00s — but I’m not sure it was ever meant to become an everyday sort of vinegar.

Marcella Hazan (of tomato sauce fame) certainly didn’t think so, admitting to a Tampa Bay Times journalist towards the end of her career that she deeply regretted introducing the stuff to U.S. audiences. Because whilst balsamic vinegar is undoubtedly flavourful, it’s also thick and sticky and intense and dark — characteristics which obstruct its usefulness in everyday cooking.

The truth of the matter is this: a proper, aged balsamic is something to be savoured only on occasion (sometimes over vanilla ice cream).

But whilst I don’t reach for the balsamic vinegar very often, may I introduce you to its cousin: white balsamic (aka ‘white condimento’)?

Working in a restaurant, one of the things that you learn very quickly is that there is vinegar/acid in everything — far more than most home cooks would ever think to add. Beyond salt, acid is one of the key ways that chefs season their food because it heightens flavours, adds brightness and offers contrast.

One technique in the French gastronomic canon is the use of a gastrique to season sauces — a caramel made from sugar and vinegar that has an intense sour-sweet thing going on. But whilst it’s an effective way of making something taste better and more addictive, it’s impractical for the home cook (ain’t nobody making caramel at home just to improve a sauce).

Enter white balsamic, an agrodolce (sweet-sour) vinegar made from grape must. At some point it occurred to me that white balsamic vinegar is essentially a pre-bottled, gentler version of a gastrique with the added benefit of being clear — in other words: it’s a shortcut to flavour available to every home cook.

White balsamic vinegar is the backbone of the salad dressing that I’m sharing with you today — and the reason that it tastes so good with only 3 ingredients. But beyond this dressing, it’s worth knowing that a tablespoon or two of white balsamic at the end of cooking will pep up roasted veggies, help season any tomato-based dish (it’s one of the reasons that this ratatouille is so delicious), add a little somethin’ extra to soups and beautifully complements seafood. It’s one of the most hard-working ingredients in my kitchen — and it should be in yours, too.

Which white balsamic to buy?

I have always bought Belazu, however I’ve noticed more versions hitting the supermarket shelves of late — including this award-winning product by Mazzetti which is available on Ocado at less than half the price of the Belazu stuff. I haven’t tried it yet, but will report back once I do!

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THE PERFECT VINAIGRETTE

By Alexandra Stafford from Alexandra’s Kitchen

Ingredients

• 1 banana shallot, very finely diced

• 1/4 tsp fine sea salt

• 60ml white balsamic vinegar — or Moscatel vinegar is a brilliant alternative if you want something a bit less sweet and a bit more sour

• 85ml extra virgin olive oil

Method

1. Add the shallots, salt and white balsamic vinegar to a jar and allow to sit for 15 minutes.

2. Pour in the olive oil, replace the lid and shake to emulsify. The dressing will keep for a few weeks in the fridge.

Taking the edge off

Soaking the onions in the vinegar first is a good way to take the edge off their pungency — I’m very sensitive to raw alliums so I use this trick a lot when cooking.

In a recipe like this, where vinegar is already part of it, it’s simply a case of introducing the step of soaking the onions into the existing method.

If vinegar is not part of the recipe, then I soak the onions in half water, half vinegar (or citrus juice) to minimise waste.

10 to 15 minutes usually does it — you’re essentially quick-pickling the onions, which dilutes the enzymes that contribute to their pungency.

The kale salad from Bitter with cavelo nero, grapefruit, flaked almonds, ricotta salata and shallot vinaigrette. Image copyright: Yuki Sugiura