A simple fix: Wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper

For the actual recipe, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

Just days after denouncing all dietary crap, I found myself in a little late-night quandary. While hastily preparing a portable lunch for the next day, I realized I had no crapless salad dressing on tap. In the home fridge we had Kraft Lite Ranch and Newman’s Own Light Lime Vinaigrette, the latter of which would have been good enough by my new standards but I really wanted to try to throw a dressing together before my quickly approaching bedtime. I’d just need a little guidance. Let me check a few cookbooks . . .

Hm. Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette or Blue Cheese Dressing from Healthy in a Hurry? Nope. No tomatoes on hand; no blue cheese to speak of. Okay, how about Apple Basil Dressing or maybe Orange Tarragon from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites? Intriguing, but no basil and no tarragon. And I had no creamy cucumbers, no minted dill, no lemon tahini, no fresh buttermilk, nor any ingredient these seemingly basic dressings required. I was too stubborn to Google “viniagrette” — why did none of my cookbooks have a simple vinaigrette recipe?

Finally — on page 649 of The New Doubleday Cookbook — a recipe for French Dressing (Vinaigrette). After the confusing mental image of bright-orange bottled dressing passed, I was part relieved, part shocked, to see the headnote and ingredients:

Called vinaigrette in France, French dressing is simply three to four parts olive oil to one part vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper. . . ¼ cup red or white wine vinegar, ¼ teaspoon salt, ⅛ teaspoon white pepper, ¾ cup olive oil

That’s a lot of oil. I know “real-world” salad dressing can have a lot of oil but this proportion of oil to vinegar seemed too extreme for my taste. I don’t want my greens swimming in oil any more than I want them coated with corn syrup.

But I never ended up testing this ratio; turns out I had a salad dressing bottle that had ingredients and amounts of various “healthy” dressings listed on its side: after all my searching for recipes, I followed their French Vinaigrette instructions:

2 oz. Olive Oil, 4 oz. Rice Wine Vinegar, 2 Tbsp. Mixed Parsley [??], 2 tsp. Dijon Mustard, 1 tsp. Minced Garlic, 1 tsp. Sugar, Pinch of Salt & Pepper

This concoction didn’t taste grand straight from the bottle, but it tasted good enough on the salad.

What I didn’t know at the time was the first recipe offered up in The Art of Simple Food was indeed Vinaigrette. (This book was sitting on the coffee table, not the cookbook shelf, when I consulted the shelf for recipes. This weekend, however, I was poised, primed, and ready to prepare vinaigrette to Ms. Waters’s ingredients, which were more or less in the same proportions as those in The New Doubleday Cookbook, except that her instructions went beyond measuring and mixing ingredients, explaining how to taste the salt’s influence on the vinegar, then at the end ending more oil or vinegar until everything seems balanced. Right at the end, she instructs, “Taste as you go and stop when it tastes right.”

I might have taken this taste-as-you-go directive too literally; after tasting salt and wine vinegar together, I added just one part oil, not three or four. I tasted. Already the mixture seemed too oily for me. So I added another part vinegar; resulting in a ratio of 2 vinegar to 1 oil. I tasted again. I really liked it. Smooth with a nice acidic kick and peppery bite. I tried this version on my greens (the first time I ever used endive!) and it added zestiness without overpowering the airy freshness of the leaves. Even with a store-brand wine vinegar and a moderately priced olive oil, it tasted right.

A Quick, Light Vinaigrette

I like using red wine vinegar, but white wine or rice wine vinegar may be used. This basic recipe can spawn dozens if not hundreds of variations. Makes about 6 tablespoons.

2 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt
Fresh-ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Press the garlic clove into a small bowl or liquid measuring cup. Add vinegar and salt; whisk to blend. Taste; adjust. Whisk in pepper, then oil. Taste; adjust.

Per tablespoon: About 43 calories (40 from fat), 5 grams fat (1g saturated*, 0g trans), 0 mg cholesterol, 195 mg sodium, 0g carbohydrates.
* Analysis was done using a generic vegetable oil category.