Dressing June’s leaves: Monthly Dressing

It was back to Salad Dressing Wars this week. Having been out of the competition for the last two months, at the last minute one of the contestants couldn’t make it, so I stepped in. Lots of chard in the mix of leaves and mizuna, which isn’t too strong.

You will also see some variegated nasturtium leaves in the salad bowl. These add a lovely mustardy flavour.

So I mixed roasted-then-crushed sunflower seeds with lemon, ginger, garlic and a little olive oil and seasoned with soya sauce and black pepper. This gave a really strong flavour, and only just managed to creep into the winning position against Ximena’s fantastically piquant offering.

Ru reckoned it had that gado-gado feel about it and everyone was surprised that it was sunflower seeds rather than peanuts. It’s interesting how different dressings appeal to different people. My dressing was described as ’simple, not too many flavours’ and as ‘unusual and complex’ by someone else!

The sunflower seeds make this dressing crunchy and delicious. If I am honest it was a bit of a cheat including them in the dressing. I normally scatter some roasted seeds on my salad to make it super tasty, but I knew that we wouldn’t do that at the site, so had to just throw them in the dressing…

And the recipe for you to try at home:

A handful of sunflower seeds, roasted* and then smashed
Juice of a lemon
An inch of ginger and one clove of garlic, both finely chopped
A generous splash of soya sauce
A few grinds of a pepper mill
And a couple of glugs of good olive oil

*If you haven’t done this before, it’s easiest to toast the seeds in a dry pan on the top of the stove, lessening the chance of your forgetting them to burn in the oven…

May’s Monthly Dressing(s!)

So a whole month has swung round and we were back taste testing salad dressings again this week. This time was a bit of a play off, with the winner of March’s dressing pitted against April’s. The leaves seem to be a little less strong this time of year, but only a little as both varieties of endive we grow, frisee and cornet de bordeaux still feature. And there is a strong brassica (cabbage-y) influence – your turnip tops, tatsoi and komastuna, the last two, delicious oriental salad greens. It was with this in mind that Ru put together his oriental dressing of which soya sauce was the leading actor. While Annie went all out on the mint front, a fresh flavour which really complements the leaves.

We went through what is now becoming a delightful ritual, two bowls of freshly picked leaves, each mixed up with a different dressing which the volunteers then taste-test, ruminate on the various flavours and then cast their vote. And this time the jury was hung. Three votes to three votes. What to do? Should the flavour of the leaves come through the dressing? Should a perfect dressing complement the leaves, like Annie’s minty dressing, or should it flavour them, like Ru’s? These were the questions flung about as we sat in the sun eating salad of a lunch hour.

It was too much to decide. What we did decide is that this time, just this time, we’ll give you both dressings. And let you make the choice…

Into Ru’s oriental dressing goes:
100ml sesame oil
100ml malt vinegar
25ml soya sauce
a sprinkling of ground pepper

And to make Annie’s minty mix:
half a lemon, juiced
1 tsp mustard - dijon
balsamic vinegar – a bit
handful of mint
these ingredients make up about a third of the jar
olive oil - a bit more
the oil makes up two thirds of the dressing.

To try the test yourself, you need the following leaves – turnip tops, chard, endive – frisee & cornet de bordeaux, buckle-leaf sorrel (though any sorrel will do), red orache and wild rocket. If you don’t have these exact leaves, don’t worry, just try anything that is in season at the moment. And enjoy!

Monthly dressing

This month we pitted the new apprentices against each other, to fight for the increasingly feted title of Monthly Dresser. Ru picked a perfect mix of leaves…

These we split into two bowls, then tossed each with a different dressing.

This time there were four volunteers on hand to do the taste test, plus Ru and I. New rule is that the makers of the dressing can’t vote. It was a tough call, as the apprentices had gone for very similar mixes. But it was Annie who walked away with the title, 4 to 2, with her (now not so) secret ingredient of black current and sloe jelly.

The leaves are still strong enough tasting to warrant a sweet dressing. Try this one, courtesy of Annie, at home:

A splosh of balsamic vinegar
A double splosh of olive oil (use Palestinian for best result)
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp black currant & sloe jelly (”or any old jam, to be honest,” says Annie)

And on the right…Annie’s winning concoction…

Monthly dressings…

So, last year I brought you leaf of the week. This year, I bring you ‘Monthly Dressing’ to make those leaves taste super good. It’s an idea that Ru and I came up with down at the site earlier this year and we trialled it this week.

We each bought in a dressing that we thought would go well with the leaves that are growing at the moment. Though there are not as many leaves this time of year, we are still managing to get quite a few which make it into your veg bags, if you are lucky!

The leaves that do well in this kind of weather are pretty strong tasting, your mustard leaves, rocket, endive and a sneaky wild chicory that Ru’s been blanching ( = covering with dark cloth so that it loses its bitterness). We also threw in some rouge d’hiver lettuce for its looks.

Three volunteers were on hand to help with the taste test. We shredded the leaves to get a good even mix of flavours in each mouthful (maybe could have been finer) and then split them out into two bowls. Then we drizzled the dressings over the top.

Ru had gone for a sweeter dressing to balance the strong flavours of the leaves. He obviously knows his leaves better than I do, as my delicious basil and sunflower seed dressing just didn’t quite cut it. And even I joined the unanimous vote to make his the first dressing to be featured on these pages.

So, what went in his perfect dressing…

200ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
100ml balsalmic vinegar
Pinch of sea salt
Ground pepper
And, the secret ingredient…1 tablespoon of maple syrup.

Maybe my dressing will do better in the summer months…look out for it!