Salad dressing

A good salad dressing can make all the difference. If my kids like the dressing, they'll eat lettuce - if they don't, they won't!

A local restaurant introduced us to Little Creek dressing, which is a very addictive blend of sunflower oil, raspberry vinegar and nutritional yeast, among other things. However, it's over $9 a bottle so we hardly ever buy it, preferring to make our own.

I have a recipe book that local charity TRACS was selling as a fundraiser (The Responsible Animal Care Society) that has a dressing recipe in it that is a guaranteed way to get the greens into the kids. It includes flax oil, lemon juice, tamari, nutritional yeast and garlic, but after a while you need to try new things so I invented a new dressing which is less acidic. This one is also a winner with the kids.

Here's the recipe. It's in metric, so for you people who always measure in cups, 250ml is equivalent to one cup. The "three parts of oil to one part of vinegar" rule always serves me well as a starting point.

450ml extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil
150ml balsamic vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced or chopped finely
quarter teaspoon each of seasalt and black pepper
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 tablespoon each of mustard and agave (or other sweetener)

You can add dried or fresh herbs to this if you want.

I use a jug with a lid with the millilitres marked on the side, which makes it really easy to make and shake. It's a good idea to make this ahead of time to give the flavours a chance to blend. Refrigerate between uses, but bear in mind that the olive oil will probably set solid in the fridge so take it out and give it time to be pourable again, or sit the container in warm water to speed up the process.