MeHi.  My name is Mark and this is my cooking blog.

I get asked a lot for my recipes, so I decided to start this cooking blog.  What you’ll find here will be my recipes and my variations on others’ recipes, my cooking tips and who knows what else. 

I should say up front that I’m lactose intolerant (check out my lactose intolerance site www.nowhey.org) and I also try to live a low-carb lifestyle.  So the recipes you’ll find here will generally be devoid of milk and milk products and try, wherever possible, to be low in carbs.

I hope you enjoy the site and the recipes.

Mark

Salads and Salad Dressings25 Jul 2008 03:56 pm

This is my version of a classic vinaigrette, easy to make and very flavorful.

Ingredients:
2 ozs vegetable oil
4 ozs olive oil
2 ozs balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp Italian seasoning blend – or herbs to taste (see notes)
1 tbs cream sherry
1/4 tsp sea or kosher salt
1 clove of garlic – medium sized, minced
1 tbs Raspberry Syrup (sugar free or regular) or 1 tsp strawberry jam (or raspberry)
1 tbs honey
2 tbs mustard (see notes)

Just mix everything together and whisk or shake until it’s combined well.  This will keep like any other salad dressing in the fridge.  I have one of those shaker bottles you get to make your own dressing – I use it to mix and store the dressing.  When I make this, I only measure the oil and the vinegar, I add everything else by feel.  I did actually measure it for purposes of this receipe, though.

Some may question why the mix of regular vegetable oil with olive oil.  I don’t use very much dressing on my salad, maybe a teaspoon, if that.  So a batch lasts me a while and I keep it in the fridge.  I found that when I made it with 100% olive oil that it tended to congeal in the fridge.  It would loosen back up if I let it warm up a bit, but I rarely remembered to take the dressing out of the fridge to let it warm up.  Mixing the oilve oil with some regular vegetable oil solved that problem and you really can’t taste the difference.  But feel free to use 100% oilve oil if you want or you are going to use it all right away.

For the seasonings, I use a product called 21 Seasoning Salute from Trader Joes, but you can use any Italian-style herb blend that you prefer.

For the mustard I use a coarse ground dijon mustard – it has some whole mustard seeds in it which gives the dressing an interesting look.  The primary purpose of the mustard is to help keep the dressing emulsified, but it also adds some flavor.

Lately I have been using 1 tbs of sugar-free raspbery syrup (Torani brand) instead of the jam.  I used to use strawberry jam in my dressing mainly because it’s what I always have on hand for my daughter’s PB&J  sandwiches, but you could use any fruit jam that you like.  If the dressing is too tart for your taste, increase the amount of jam and/or honey.