Caesar--its all in the name.

Just a quick post to share my vegan caesar salad dressing.  I got the recipe from my ex, the professional cook and memorized all of the ingredients. I have been making it for over 2 years now and don't/haven't ever used actual measurements.

Vegan Caesar Dressing

1/2 cup of cashews or any oily nut 

2 cups olive oil

1 cup lemon juice

1 clove of garlic

4 tbsp dijon mustard

2 tsp Frank's hot sauce

salt and pepper to taste

Put the cashews, 1 cup olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, hot sauce and mustard into a food processor and combine.

While the machine is on, slowly add the rest of your olive oil, emulsifying all of your ingredients so they are combined.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

All ingredients combined should form a creamy dressing that you can use on any type of greens.

NOTE: if you find your dressing tasting like garlic add more oil and lemon juice. Adjust the dressing to how you prefer it to taste. At my house we love garlic so much you'd think the vampire apocalypse is coming.

Beans, capers, trout...oh my!

Nicoise Salad.

The French do it right. Foie gras, duck confit and charcuterie are just some of the French foods or French cooking concepts I have come to love. This week I was craving what I call a substantial salad. A substantial salad is the kind of salad you can eat for dinner that incorporates all of the food groups. It's not your basic lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber kinda salad.

 I've never made a nicoise salad (pronounced nee-suaz). So all day Monday (my experimental cooking day) I called around St. Catharines looking for a reputable grocery store and fish monger who sold fresh, sashimi grade tuna. Unfortunately,  in the middle of January the only place that had some was Sobey's. It was previously frozen from the Philippines and was not sashimi grade. So needless to say I did not buy that to put on top of my salad. Many recipes also suggested using canned tuna, but in my mind that seemed like it was going to taste disgusting and ruin the beautiful salad. With an even more beautiful name. I decided on some fresh trout instead of tuna and I thought it tasted great! So here MY version of the beautifully sounding and tasting nicoise salad.

Find your inner Julia Child in you and make some French food. Find the recipe here.