Sweet Vidalia Onion Salad Dressing

One Perfect Bite was featured in the Sunday Brunch Segment of Amuse Bouche, the blog associated with the magazine Where Women Cook. It you're interested, the feature can be seen here.





From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...I'm fairly even tempered and it takes a lot to move me from cold to hot. That's not to say I don't have a pet peeve or two, and, as it happened, a couple of them surfaced today. One is the accumulation of unfinished cereal sitting in boxes that are only fractionally full. That happens a lot around here because each member of my family has a favorite all their own. That favorite is generally unfinished at the end of a visit, so, to my great shame, you'll occasionally find Cocoa Puffs or Fruit Loops floating in my cereal bowl. Generally, the assortment stales before I can work my way through it and I'm left feeling guilty because I have to throw it away. That happened this morning. Another peeve surfaced this evening while the table was being set for dinner. I think we all have a vision of what we consider to be gracious living. Mine does not include a collection of jars and bottles sitting in the center of the dinner table. In my dream world, salads are tossed in the kitchen and graciously served from a bowl at the table. The Silver Fox doesn't share my vision. So, it happens that an assortment of condiments and dressings got to claim space at my table tonight. Among them was the Vidalia onion dressing I used to make peanut sauce earlier in the week. One of the advantages to making your own condiments and dressing is that you can control the amount you make by sizing the recipe for them up or down. I normally make half the recipe because that's sufficient for our needs. While I make this to use in peanut sauce, it's also wonderful on bitter greens and fresh fruit, so I have plenty of opportunities to use it and it will not go to waste. The dressing is embarrassingly easy to make, but I do have one serious caution. The Vidalia is a sweet onion. While other sweet onions can be used to make this, don't make the mistake of thinking all white onions are sweet. Ask the produce manager if you are not sure. If you make this with anything other than sweet onions it will be dreadful and you'll speak of me using adjectives I'd prefer you not. REMEMBER SWEET ONIONS. Here's the recipe.

Sweet Vidalia Onion Salad Dressing...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite adapted from Group Recipes

Ingredients:
1/2 large vidalia onion
1/4 cup vegetable oil
6 tablespoons white vinegar
8 tablespoons granulated sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons ground dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon salt or salt to taste
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper or pepper to taste

Directions:
1) Slice 1/2 inch off both ends of onion. Pierce onion skin in several places with a sharp knife. Place onion in microwave-proof bowl. Add a tablespoon of water and microwave, covered, on HIGH power until soft, about 3 to 4 minutes. Set aside to cool.
2) When cooled, peel and place in food processor. Puree until smooth. Add oil, vinegar, sugar, mustard, garlic powder, celery seed, salt and pepper and process until smooth. Chill. Yield: 1-1/2 cups.

You also might enjoy these recipes:
Caesar Salad Dressing - Shih's Cooking
Basic Vinaigrette - A Couple Cooks
Thousand Island Dressing - Cookistry
Buttermilk Ranch Dip - In Flora's Kitchen
Creamy Cilantro Tomatillo Dressing - Gina's Skinny Recipes
Honey Mustard Salad Dressing - Stylish Cuisine
Orange Balsamic Dressing - Vegacious
Feta Cheese Dill Dressing - SpiceOpolis
Homemade Catalina Dressing - For the Love of Food
Lime and Wasabi Dressing - Entertaining Made Easy
Ranch Dressing - The Brunette Foodie
Poppy Seed Dressing - Being Suzy Homemaker
Recipe for Green Goddess Salad Dressing - Kalyn's Kitchen
Pink Grapefruit Salad Dressing - One Perfect Bite
Poppy Seed Salad Dressing - One Perfect Bite
Blue Cheese Dip - One Perfect Bite

Pink Grapefruit Salad Dressing - Pink Saturday

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...Grapefruit is a common ingredient in my winter kitchen. Bob and I drink grapefruit juice the way some folks drink soda, so I always have a supply of it available. We also love the fruit and serve it fresh out of hand for snacking and winter salads. While I've had no medical training, my own experience has convinced me that grapefruit helps prevent water retention. That belief, justified or not, has cemented my loyalty to the tart citrus and keeps it on my favorite's list. Several years ago I was asked to make a salad for a bridal luncheon. Having said yes, I wanted the salad to be especially beautiful and add color and flavor to an otherwise creamy meal. I made composed citrus salads for each of the tables. My plan was to have the salads tossed at the tables just before they were to be served. I wanted the salad dressing used to toss the salads to be as beautiful as the salads themselves. I think we did O.K. The salad dressing I'm featuring today is the one I developed for that bridal luncheon and I think you'll enjoy its brightness. I know you'll love its color. Here's the recipe.

Pink Grapefruit Salad Dressing...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite


Ingredients:
1/3 cup ruby red grapefruit juice
2 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon lightly colored honey or honey to taste

Directions:
Combine juice, vinegar, oil, orange and lemon zest, mustard, salt, pepper and honey in bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine. Pour into a cruet and chill well before serving. Yield: 1 cup.

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Honey Mustard Salad Dressing - Stylish Cuisine
Homemade Catalina Salad Dressings - For the Love of Food
Greek Salad Dressing - I Made Toast
Light and Creamy Avocado Buttermilk Salad Dressing = Mother Rimmy's Cooking Light Done Right
Celery Seed Dressing - 400 Calories or Less
Russian Salad Dressing - The Parsley Thief
Honey Dijon Vinaigrette - Our Life in the Kitchen
Balsamic Vinaigrette - Closet Cooking


This post is being linked to:
Pink Saturday, sponsored by Beverly at How Sweet the Sound.

Blue Cheese Dip

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...This is one of the chameleons of my kitchen. I use it as a dip, a spread and a salad dressing. It main ingredient is cottage cheese and that makes it figure friendly, as well as being versatile and easy to do. The downside to this recipe, if there is one, is that you'll need a food processor to break up and pulverize the cheese curds. Plan to make this a day before you plan to use it and use a really good blue cheese for best flavor. The original recipe was developed by Patricia Wells and she used a French Roquefort to make the dip. French Roquefort is made from sheep's milk and is naturally aged in caves to produce the blue streaks with which we are all familiar. The cheese must ripen for a period that ranges from three months to a year in order to produce its characteristic aroma and flavor. Other blue veined cheeses, domestic or imported, are made from cow's milk and are aged in humidity controlled environments rather than caves. I use Roquefort during the holiday season, but rely on good domestic varieties for the remainder of the year. The dip can be thinned with milk to produce a wonderful salad dressing. If you enjoy blue cheese I think you'll enjoy this dip. Here's the recipe.

Blue Cheese Dip...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite, inspired by Patricia Wells

Ingredients:
2 cups cottage cheese
1/4 cup fresh snipped chives
1/2 to 3/4 cup coarsely crumbled Roquefort or blue cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Place cottage cheese in bowl of a food processor; pulse to break up curds. Add chives and blue cheese and process briefly just to blend. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pulse again to distribute seasonings. Transfer to a lidded container and store in refrigerator for at least 24 hours to ripen. Bring to room temperature to serve. Yield: 2 cups.

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Bleu Cheese and Bacon Dip - Easy Appetizers
Roasted Red Pepper Hummus - Eat Real
Hummus - Food for Thought
Easy Appetizer: White Bean Dip - Spoonful
Baba Ganoush - One Perfect Bite
Seven Layer Bean Dip - Simply Recipes
Easy Black Bean Dip - Pinch My Salt

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...One of the things for which Helen Corbitt is remembered, is the poppy seed dressing she used to dress the grapefruit and avocado salad served in the Zodiac Room at the Neiman Marcus store in Dallas, Texas. She was an well-educated Irish New Yorker who spent most of her food career in the state of Texas, including 18 years as the majordomo of food services for the Neiman Marcus empire. She was by all accounts a modest, but opinionated woman, who wrote five cookbooks and was the first woman to garner the food service industry's highest accolade, the Golden Plate Award. She fed president's and kings and became a trend setter in the 1950's. While she is credited for many innovations, among them poppy seed dressing and cowboy caviar, she insisted she had not created many of the things attributed to her. She did, however, bring them to everyone's attention and made them popular. You can read more about her here and if you are a collector of cookbooks you can find a collection of her recipes, The Best of Helen Corbitt's Kitchens, here. I am a newcomer to her recipes and I wanted to try the poppy seed dressing she made famous. In order to do that, I had to reconstruct the signature salad that she dressed with it. I wanted to share both with you, as together they make a nice summer salad. The dressing would work well with any citrus salad. Is it as good as they say it is? Probably not, but it's nice to have a dressing for fruit salad handy and this one is easy to make and perfectly serviceable. Here's the recipe.

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing ...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite, courtesy of Texas Home Cooking

Ingredients:
Dressing
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon grated onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
Salad
2 grapefruit, peeled and sectioned into cubes
1 avocado, peeled and cut into cubes
4 cups trimmed watercress

Directions:
1) To make poppy seed dressing: In a food processor or with a mixer, combine sugar, honey, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, onion, salt and paprika. Pour in oil and continue mixing until dressing is thick. Blend in poppy seeds. Refrigerated dressing will keep for 2 to 3 weeks. If it separates, process or mix again before serving. Yield: 1 cup.
2) To make the salad: Arrange a bed of watercress on each of 4 salad plates. Top with avocado and grapefruit pieces. Drizzle each salad with 1 tablespoon dressing. Makes 4 servings.

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Endive, Pear and Watercress Salad - One Perfect Bite
Andalusian Salad with Avocados, Oranges and Almonds - One Perfect Bite
Berry Patch Salad - One Perfect Bite
Summer Fruit Salad - The English Kitchen
Citrus Salad - Wine Lady Cooks
Moroccan Fruit Salad - Moroc Mama
Dragon Fruit Salad - Pham Fatale

Lavender Sugar, Butter and Salad Dressing - Blue Monday

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...While folks more sensible than Bob and I were enjoying their air conditioned homes or breezy decks, we were traipsing through fields of lavender doing our part to make the Oregon Lavender Festival a success. Our intent was to tour several operations and find a good local source for culinary lavender. I was easy to spot. Fair skin demands full sun protection on these hot sunny days. I was the gal who looked liked a bee keeper. High temperatures and blazing sun aside, we had a glorious day, met some kindred spirits and even picked up a few recipes that I can share with you today. The recipes are very easy to make and use less lavender than many of the recipes floating in cyberspace. Lavender has a distinctive taste that borders on bitter if too much of it is used. If you like its flavor, you might want to increase the amounts I have suggested in each of the recipes below. The first recipe is for lavender sugar. I've also included recipes for lavender butter and a salad dressing. I use dried flower buds in all these dishes because of the seasonal nature of fresh lavender. If you'd like to dry your own lavender, instructions can be found here. English lavender is the best to use for culinary purposes. Here are the recipes.

Lavender Sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons coarsely ground dried lavender buds

Combine lavender and sugar. Store in an airtight container for at least 3 days. Strain before using. Yield: 1 cup.

Lavender Butter
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon honey
1-1/2 teaspoons dried lavender buds, whole or lightly ground

Combine butter, honey and lavender in a small bowl. Mix well. Shape as desired. Refrigerate until firm. Serve with sweet bread. Yield: 1/2 cup.

Lavender Salad Dressing
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup honey
1-1/2 tablespoons dried lavender buds, ground
Salt and Pepper to taste

Combine oil, vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, mustard, honey, lavender, salt and pepper in the jar of an electric blender. Pulse to combine. Transfer to a serving container. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving. Yield: 1 cup.

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Peach-Lavender Cobbler - Delish
Apricot Clafouti with Lavender and Pecans - Cooking with Corey
Lavender White Chocolate Cookies - Life Lightly Salted
Brandy Tuiles with Lavender Cream - My Easy Kitchen
Bouquet Cupcakes: Lilac and Lavender - The Conscious Kitchen
Raspberry Lavender Lemonade - Kahakai Kitchen

This post is being linked to:
Smiling Sally - Blue Monday

Thousand Island Dressing - Pink Saturday

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...It's baaack! While I'm not sure it ever went away, there was a long stretch of time when no one would admit they still ate this classic American salad. I speak, of course, of wedge-shaped iceberg lettuce that's been cloaked in the folds of a creamy dressing. The salad first appeared in the 1920's, but the height of its popularity came during the 1950's and 1960's when it was a standard feature on dinner tables across the country. There are few dishes easier to make and I'm fairly certain that its popularity coincided with the appearance of bottled salad dressings on supermarket shelves. While the preference these days seems to be for blue cheese, in those early years Thousand Island was the salad dressing of choice. I am a traditionalist and wouldn't dream of serving this salad with anything other than the ubiquitous salmon pink dressing. That, however, is where my homage ends. This dressing bares no resemblance to the one that was popular in the fifties. It carries with it a touch of the Orient and enough other ingredients to set your palate singing. I really think you like this. You'll need four wedges of iceberg lettuce to make this salad. Don't cut them until you are ready to dress the salad. Lettuce browns quickly when cut with a knife, so don't get too far ahead of yourself. This is the recipe I use to dress the salad.

Thousand Island Dressing...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite, courtesy of Martha Stewart

Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons ketchup
Optional: 1 teaspoon sambal oelek (hot chile paste)
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped sweet pickles, or sweet pickle relish
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped green olives with pimientos

Directions:
Whisk together mayonnaise, ketchup, chile paste (if using), pickles, and olives in a medium bowl. Dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container up to 1 week. Yield: 3/4 cup.

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Asian-Style Carrot Salad - One Perfect Bite
Corn Salad with Edamame and Tomatoes - One Perfect Bite
Bulgur Salad with Pomegranate Dressing - One Perfect Bite
Iceberg Wedge Salad with Buttermilk Dressing - Sippity Sup
Iceberg Wedge with Blue Cheese Dressing - Saveur
Blue Smoke's Iceberg Wedges with Roquefort Dressing - Serious Eats

This post is being linked to:
Pink Saturday, sponsored by Beverly at How Sweet the Sound.