Mint Dressing
Jul. 15th, 2024 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wyld_dandelyonSo, I was looking at some of Facebook's short videos, and in between parkour and dancing and ADHD stuff there was a recipe for salad dressing made from carrots and celery and onion and fresh ginger (and oil and stuff), and I thought, "that sounds good--but I have no fresh ginger." Too bad, I thought, because there's some lettuce in the fridge that should be eaten and I'm tired of boring salad.
And then my mind bounced from that to what I do have a lot of this year, which is fresh peppermint in my garden, and the need to cut some of it short where it leapt across the path and is quite close to the cucumbers. And so I googled dressing made from fresh mint--and I found a recipe. Not one that tempted me, really, since it's a Dijon mustard-based recipe, and I am not a mustard fan. But still, it gave me a template to improvise from, at least sort of.
So I went out into the tail end of the thunderstorm to cut some of that mint in the dark, came in, pulled the leaves off the stems and tossed them into a two-cup measure until it was about half-full. More than the recipe I'd found called for, but that's ok. I added three cloves of garlic (instead of one), minced fine, and about a third of an onion rough-chopped. The recipe called for a half-cup of lemon juice; I had no lemons, and the bottle of lemon juice in the fridge had only a tablespoon or so, but that went in.
Then I paused to consider. The recipe called for olive oil or avocado oil, and while I have oil, I'm not much of a fan of oil-based dressings (to the point where I sometimes used to make dressing with just herbs and red wine vinegar; those days are gone since I can't trust red wine-based things to be gluten free). Anyway, I remembered I had a container of Oui lemon yogurt. That would add more lemon and not be oil. Bonus, it has probiotics because it's yogurt, and I try to do a lot of those after every need for antibiotics. So I tossed that in and didn't add the honey the recipe suggested because Oui is a very sweet yogurt.
And all of it went into the food processor! I tasted; it was good but really strong and thicker than I wanted. I stared at the fridge and took out the jar of slightly pickled cucumbers I'd made by tossing in slices of not-ripe-enough-to-my-taste cucumber into a jar of the liquid that I'd eaten the dill pickles out of a couple of days ago. I tossed in about half of the cucumber from the jar (and a couple tiny bits of dill that were stuck to the slices) and whirred it around until the whirring was smooth again, and tasted again. I may decide to alter the recipe some more, after I've had it on several salads and the newness has worn off, but I decided that for today it was just fine.
Then I got the tail end of a head of lettuce and half a huge tomato, and ate some not-boring salad.
And then my mind bounced from that to what I do have a lot of this year, which is fresh peppermint in my garden, and the need to cut some of it short where it leapt across the path and is quite close to the cucumbers. And so I googled dressing made from fresh mint--and I found a recipe. Not one that tempted me, really, since it's a Dijon mustard-based recipe, and I am not a mustard fan. But still, it gave me a template to improvise from, at least sort of.
So I went out into the tail end of the thunderstorm to cut some of that mint in the dark, came in, pulled the leaves off the stems and tossed them into a two-cup measure until it was about half-full. More than the recipe I'd found called for, but that's ok. I added three cloves of garlic (instead of one), minced fine, and about a third of an onion rough-chopped. The recipe called for a half-cup of lemon juice; I had no lemons, and the bottle of lemon juice in the fridge had only a tablespoon or so, but that went in.
Then I paused to consider. The recipe called for olive oil or avocado oil, and while I have oil, I'm not much of a fan of oil-based dressings (to the point where I sometimes used to make dressing with just herbs and red wine vinegar; those days are gone since I can't trust red wine-based things to be gluten free). Anyway, I remembered I had a container of Oui lemon yogurt. That would add more lemon and not be oil. Bonus, it has probiotics because it's yogurt, and I try to do a lot of those after every need for antibiotics. So I tossed that in and didn't add the honey the recipe suggested because Oui is a very sweet yogurt.
And all of it went into the food processor! I tasted; it was good but really strong and thicker than I wanted. I stared at the fridge and took out the jar of slightly pickled cucumbers I'd made by tossing in slices of not-ripe-enough-to-my-taste cucumber into a jar of the liquid that I'd eaten the dill pickles out of a couple of days ago. I tossed in about half of the cucumber from the jar (and a couple tiny bits of dill that were stuck to the slices) and whirred it around until the whirring was smooth again, and tasted again. I may decide to alter the recipe some more, after I've had it on several salads and the newness has worn off, but I decided that for today it was just fine.
Then I got the tail end of a head of lettuce and half a huge tomato, and ate some not-boring salad.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-15 09:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 12:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-15 02:01 pm (UTC)Looks good. I think one can improvise anything with food. Recipes, like military planning are only a basis for starting. (Wow, that's a twisted metaphor.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-15 08:12 pm (UTC)-If it's the Captain's Mess, let him clean it up!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 12:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 01:14 am (UTC)In that cartoon, he was sailing with Columbus, but... yeah...
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 12:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 01:19 am (UTC)Possibly, except when writing a novel, the characters might talk to you and have a say in what you’re writing. Recipes don’t. (Although as Von Moltke said, “the enemy gets a vote.”)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-17 01:02 pm (UTC)