Salad Days

As a child one of the naughtiest things I did was to drink the vinegar from the enormous jar of pickled onions sitting on the floor of the pantry. The cupboard was under the stairs, so I could shut myself away and nobody knew what I was up to. Fast forward many years and when lunching with a colleague, she ranted at length about “undressed” salads, resulting in a sharing of recipes for vinaigrette. My first version was 3 tabs olive oil/1 tab wine vinegar/ 1/2tsp french mustard to stabilise the emulsion, all whisked together well. I’ve used that for many years, but it often isn’t enough and so I double everything and use some balsamic vinegar too. So 6/2/1. More recently it has become 8/2/1 so it has less of a “bite”, with the balsamic vinegar enriching the colour as well as the flavour. Funny how our childhood preferences have long-reaching implications!