(no subject)

[which_chick]

I've been making my own salad dressing here of late, mostly to perk up the cucumbers and cabbage I've been having for those Eat Snacky Smores moments in my life. I am not currently entertaining any actual eating of Snacky Smores, so cucumbers and cabbage are what I get instead. They're cheap, fairly low calorie, and crunchy. Since they're a little boring on the flavor front, I put salad dressing on them to make them more interesting.



2 cloves garlic, smashed between two spoons (nested, like spoons do).
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon paprika
1 scant teaspoon chipotle pepper (powdered)
Two good squirts of Heinz ketchup (It helps with the mixing in of the oil. There's a word for that. Luxated eyeball? Obsequious? Eutrification? EMULSION. Helps with the EMULSION thing. Seriously. If you add ketchup, the stuff stays mixed up a lot better. Plus, it's red and goes with the general red theme I've got going on here.)
Three or four tablespoons of red wine vinegar (for making it appropriately runny and sour)
half a teaspoon salt

Sometimes, I add black pepper. Sometimes I add a little Old Bay. Sometimes I add red (Cayenne) pepper. But that, above, is the general base. I wish I could give you more on the ketchup front, but I don't measure that part. I just add it until it looks right.

It's better if it's left to sit for a day or so and it's not mellow or gentle. I dribble it on gently instead of going the full coverage route. Full coverage is too much. The vegetable flavors get lost in this and it makes my lips burn. It is, however, a very useful way to turn cabbage into something that can pass for Snacky Smores in poor lighting. It also goes right nicely on tomatoes. I have never actually put it on a salad.

The reason I was in the kitchen working on some way to make cucumbers not taste like themselves was that I didn't HAVE any salad dressing handy. Also, most salad dressing exists to enhance the flavor of the veggies, not to cover it up entirely and make the whole assemblage taste like some bizarre vinegar-and-chili-pepper crisp. Anyway, I like it.

Comments

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

Fascinating about the emulsion. We always have problems with the emulsion bit when we mix our own.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

Do you not like cucumbers? Or you were tired of them?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

No, that's not it. I like cucumbers just fine and in summer have spent many a hot afternoon with myself and a paring knife and a salt shaker and a stack of cukes. The thing here is that I am using cucumbers and cabbage (though not at the same time) to provide an appropriate amount of crunch and chewability at snack time. They don't really provide the illusion of snack food without some additional flavoring, though. That's where the salad dressing comes in.