Corduroy Orange

This salad dressing uses lime juice instead of vinegar to provide its acid.  Roasting the limes alongside the red peppers helps them to yield all of their juice.

• 2 red bell peppers
• 2 limes
• The leaves from a 3.5-inch sprig of fresh rosemary, minced
• Extra virgin olive oil equal to the limes’ juice (~1/3 cup)
• ~1/4 teaspoon of salt (or to taste)

To roast the red peppers and the limes, get a cast iron skillet large enough to accommodate all 4 pieces hot on a medium-high flame.  Put the peppers and limes down on the hot skillet.  Keep a loose eye on them and turn them whenever their skin gets scorched–the limes will likely need to be turned sooner than the peppers.  Turn, turn, turn (to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn) until their skin is dark and puckered on all sides of the pepper, and the limes have four scorch marks and have softened considerably.

Cut the limes in half and juice them.  Measure the juice that they yield, as this will influence how much olive oil you need.  Run the peppers under a slow trickle of cool water and pull the skin from the meat.  Discard the skin; cut the meat of the peppers from the seeds, stems, and ribs of pith.  Cut the peppers into approximately 2-inch chunks.

Combine the peppers, the lime juice, the salt, and the rosemary in a blender and puree.  With the blender running, slowly drizzle the olive oil into the pepper-lime juice mixture.  The blender will help to create a strong emulsion between the oil and the pepper puree.  this dressing should keep well without having to be shaken before each use… but it contains no preservatives except for the acid in the lime juice, so don’t let it languish forgotten in the rear of your refrigerator!  [Although, as good as it tastes, I doubt that using it up quickly will be an issue!]

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Cast Iron, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.