Making a More Complex Vinaigrette

Perhaps you want a somewhat moe complex salad dressing than a simple mixture of oil, vinegar, and spices. Something with fruit in it, perhaps? I’ve heard that raspberry vinaigrettes are popular, though I can’t stand the bottled version. On the other hand, if you used a blender and mixed fresh rasberries with balsamic or tarragon vinegar into a puree and then, with the blender on a fairly low setting, drizzled olive oil through the top until the contents of the blender formed a thick emulsification, that would be a raspberry vinaigrette I’d consider eating.

Another nice salad dressing involves using the yolks from a few hard boiled eggs. Mash them in a bowl with some salt, some pepper, and a bit of white wine vinegar. When you’ve formed a paste, add olive oil to the mix, stirring constantly, until you reach your desired consistency. Use the egg whites to garnish the salad over which you pour this freshly prepared and very tasty dressing.

Another example of a more complex vinaigrette is my roasted tomato and balsamic vinegar sauce, which I opted not to label as a vinaigrette because it’s so much more versatile than just being a salad dressing.  However, that’s the case with many such sauces: the raspberry dressing described above would go quite nicely with roast duck, I believe, and the egg-yolk dressing is a nice bacteria-free alternative to hollandaise.

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