¼ cup red wine vinegar

¾ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

½ tablespoon clear honey

1 teaspoon celery seeds (optional)

Salt and black pepper to taste.

Whisk all ingredients together until they are all well incorporated. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Combine in a bowl a clove of garlic and one small shallot, both minced. Add to them around 4 tablespoons of assorted chopped fresh herbs, parsley, basil, tarragon are good but use any herbs you like.

Add approx 1/3 cup of cider vinegar to the herbs, garlic and shallot and mix well. Slowly blend in approx 2/3 cup of olive oil, whisking all the time, until emulsified. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

For the vinaigrette start by placing a teaspoon each of sea salt and black peppercorns in a mortar, use the pestle to crush them. Then add 1 clove of garlic and use the pestle again to crush with the salt and pepper. Next add a teaspoon of mustard powder and a teaspoon of fresh chopped basil, and work them into the garlic, salt and pepper using a mini whisk. Now you need to add 2 tablespoons of Balsamic vinegar and using a mini whisk work it into the other ingredients. the last step is to add 4 tablespoons of olive oil, add slowly using the mini whisk all the time to blend the oil with the other ingredients. You now have a perfect vinaigrette!

The salad itself consists of cherry tomatoes, cut into halves, chopped celery and chopped red onion. Mix these together in a bowl then pour the vinaigrette over them, toss gently to ensure all the tomatoes, celery and onion are all coated with the vinaigrette. The salad is now ready to eat. I like to have this salad with white crusty bread.

Enjoy!

To begin with you will need to separate the yolks from the whites of two large fresh eggs, now if you can crack an egg with one hand you can simply open it over your other hand and let the white trickle away through your fingers, retaining the yolk in the palm of your hand. If you can’t crack an egg with one hand, why not? It’s easy But if you can’t, crack the egg with two hands and gently pour the yolk from one half of the shell into the other, and keep doing this until you are only left with the yolk.

Place the egg yolks into a bowl or a blender and add to them one heaped teaspoon of dry mustard powder, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix these together.

Next comes the part where you need to pay attention, begin to slowly add around 300ml of olive oil or a nut oil. When I say slowly I mean drop by drop and keep whisking or blending all the time, otherwise the mixture will curdle and you end up with a big inedible mess*. After you have added a little of the oil you should notice the mixture thickening up, when this happens add a teaspoon of white vinegar to thin it down. Carry on adding the oil slowly, drop by drop and making sure each drop is well combined before adding the next drop. Once all the oil is combined, do a taste test and add more salt and/or pepper if needed.

ok, that’s it, homemade mayonnaise. Store in an airtight container for no more than a week in the fridge.

*TIP: If the mixture does curdle, don’t worry, if you have another egg yolk put this into a bowl and slowly pour the curdled mixture into it, whisking all the time. Then continue to add the oil as if nothing happened. No one will ever notice, and I won’t tell them if you don’t

Of course homemade salad cream is the best salad cream of all, and I will be giving you a recipe for that shortly. But first, if you will insist on buying salad cream, please pay attention to the following;

Ok, the recipe for homemade salad cream comes originally from Mrs Beaton, but when I’ve made it myself I have changed it a little, Mrs Beaton used far too much vinegar in my humble opinion, but the recipe is flexible so add more if you wish.

To start you will need to hard boil some eggs, I normally do 6 or 8 depending on the size of the egg. Fresh salad cream will only last for about 3 days in the fridge, so it’s pointless making a huge batch. Boil the eggs for about 10 minutes then place in ice cold water to cool. Once cooled remove the shells and slice in half, place the yolks in a bowl and wrap the whites in cling film and place in the fridge, you can do something else with them, but that’s for another post

To the egg yolks add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a splash of vinegar. You can also add a sqeeze of lemon juice too if you want. Blend all these together to form a thick paste. Now start to add some cream, do it slowly and keep mixing. You don’t want the sauce too thick or too runny.

When you think it’s nearly at the right consistency, stop and do a taste test. Now is the time to add more mustard or pepper if your taste buds demand it. Finish off by adding a little more vinegar until you acheive the right consistency.

Of course if you don’t want to add more vinegar add a little more cream, as I said earlier this is a flexible recipe so make it how you like it.

Lemon olive oil is useful in so many ways, it can used as is, as a dressing for salad, or as an ingredient in a more elaborate salad dressing. It is excellent for cooking, especially fish. It is probably something you should make on a regular basis so that you always have some to use when needed. And there really is no point buying those expensive infused olive oils, when you can make your own easily and for a fraction of the cost.

For Lemon Olive Oil, you will need 1 bottle of olive oil, or rapeseed oil, or any other type of oil, the choice is yours. Add to this bottle some lemon zest, about 2 – 3 tablespoons. Leave the bottle of oil with the lemon zest to stand for about 2 weeks at room temperature. Shake it occasionally.

After two weeks or thereabouts, strain the oil through some muslin or any other fine strainer. You want to remove the zest from the oil. Discard the zest and pour the Lemon Olive Oil back into the bottle, and it is ready to use.

Yesterday, on their return from Calais, Mrs Neighbour surprised me with a new acquisition. She still had her cheese mountain, but on this trip she had also purchased 48 bottles of Olive Oil. After showing me her bounty of Olive Oil she posed a question, Does Olive Oil go bad? Now, I won’t lie to you, my first thought was to return her question with a question of my own, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to find that out before buying 48 bottles of the stuff? I didn’t ask that question though, instead I told her what I knew about Olive Oil, and as Olive Oil is a vital ingredient in salad dressings, I’m going to tell you too.

Yes, Olive Oil can go bad, rancid even. Olive Oil goes bad because of a process called oxidation, this process happens when air reacts with chemicals in the oil and produces peroxides. Now, while these peroxides can do wonders turning a brunette into a blonde, they do nothing to enhance the taste of a killer salad. The oxidation process speeds up when the Olive oil is exposed to air, heat and light. So you need to keep Olive oil in a cool, dark place, and in an airtight container. A cupboard is fine, and if you can keep you oil in a coloured container, not clear glass, it will be even better.

Now, even if Mrs neighbour takes my advice and keeps her Olive oil in suitable conditions, if she doesn’t get through her 48 bottles in under 3 years or so, it will eventually turn rancid anyway, due to auto-oxidation. Even in a cool dry place, in an airtight container, the antioxidants in the oil can only keep the auto-oxidation process at bay for so long.

So, my top tips for top quality salad dressings is to buy Olive oil as you need it, keep it in a coloured, airtight container, and keep it in a cool, dark place when you are not using it.

Simply mix together 1 teaspoon of clear honey, with 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, the juice of half a lime, and 4 tablespoons of a light Olive oil. To make sure the ingredients are mixed together properly place them all in a screw top jar and shake vigorously.

Then add to your salad of choice and enjoy.

Crab Louie was perfect for the glasses for three reasons, firstly it was created and most popular at the right time, secondly it had enough ingredients of varying textures and colours to give a nice layer effect in the glasses, and last but not least, the recipe sounded delicious.

The recipes I found for Crab Louie varied slightly, but they all included crab meat, crisp lettuce and a delicious Crab Louie dressing. Crab Louie dressing is similar to Thousand Island dressing, but more tangy. The other ingredients varied but typically included tomato, egg, cucumber, asparagus, spring/green onions and olives. Using a selection or all of these in a Crab Louie is down to personal preference, as is the preparation. Some like all the ingredients mixed with the dressing before serving, others prefer the dressing on the side.

I started by making the Crab Louie dressing, for this I used 1 cup of good mayonnaise, half a cup of Chilli Sauce, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon each of minced spring/green onion and green pepper. Mix all these ingredients together and season to taste with a little salt and black pepper. Leave the dressing to chill in the refrigerator.

Now, you can buy a whole crab and cook it yourself for the Crab Louie, the good thing about this is that you have the claws for decoration. However, it’s a messy and time consuming task extracting the meat, so I cheated and bought cooked crab meat for my salad.

The other ingredients I used were tomato, lightly steamed asparagus spears, one hard boiled egg, cucumber and a crisp Romaine Lettuce. I chopped all these into small pieces and then began the layering process in the glasses.

At the base of the glass I placed some of the lettuce, the layers continued with crab meat, dressing, asparagus, tomato, crab meat, dressing, egg, cucumber, crab meat and finally some more of the dressing. I sprinkled some paprika over the top, and my layered Crab Louie Salad was ready to eat, and it was delicious

You will need:

¼ Cup Freshly squeezed lemon juice
¾ Cup Extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoon Chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 Tablespoon Diced shallot
1 Teasoon Finely chopped garlic
1 Teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 Teaspoon Granulated sugar
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

It’s very easy, simply combine all the ingredients together, except the olive oil, in a blender. Once combined slowly added the olive oil and continue blending in short bursts until emulsified. If you don’t have a blender a hand whisk will be fine.

This dressing can be kept for about a week if stored in the fridge.

Enjoy!