A good vinaigrette is the key to great greens

When it comes to eating healthy, the importance of a good vinaigrette cannot be overstated. Among the many competing nutritional paradigms to believe, raw leaves are never shunned.

None of the diets that focus on carbohydrate, fat and protein have any problem with raw leaves. Nor do clans like Paleo or vegan, or fads with names too silly to print. Even Dr. Atkins ate leaves.

Raw greens deliver a broader spectrum of nutrients than cooked because raw greens are alive, with functioning enzymes and uncooked proteins.

The most negative thing that anybody has ever said about raw leaves is they don’t care to eat them. And cooks respond to this objection by adding evermore non-leafy materials. That’s why I’ve been distinguishing “raw leaves and greens,” rather than just saying “salad,” which has become a code word for “whatever you really want to eat, atop plant parts.” Croutons, dried fruit, extra protein and other toppings are weighing down the salads of America, and the raw leaves are getting suffocated and left behind.

Good-quality ingredients

It’s one thing to avoid adding a bunch of unnecessary business to your raw leaves, but making them taste good is another matter. Bottled salad dressing can be as disappointing as it is expensive, and can be so rich that if you were to eat a big salad, which you should, then you would be consuming a lot of calories from dressing. Even the fancy ones can have cheap ingredients, or empty oils like soy, canola, corn or safflower. When you dress from a bottle, you dress with stabilizers, preservatives and sugars like maltodextrin that don’t sound like sugar but are just as bad, if not worse. It makes all the sense in the world to spend your money on good ingredients. Mostly, this means good olive oil.

A good vinaigrette often sounds like a great idea, but in practice, mixing your own oil and vinegar can result in a less satisfying salad than had you just dumped some bottled Italian on your foliage.

A proper homemade dressing won’t upstage your leaves or fill you up like bottled dressing often does. And you can make it with the finest ingredients available and still save money.

Included are two easy vinaigrette recipes that will turn a pile of leaves into something more satisfying. These recipes need to be stirred well and tossed into the salad. You can’t leave it in a bottle on the table and let people dress their own, because it will have separated.

Alternatively, you can dip your leaves into the dressing, like my wife does. She created these recipes, so she should know. She’ll toss a vinaigrette into a salad if we are having company; otherwise she dips. We all do, now.

Recipes

Her vinaigrettes use the following ingredients:

• Extra virgin olive oil: It has to be good stuff, at a price where you can afford to dump it on. My favorite is California Ranch. It’s cheaper than almost any so-called specialty oil, and superior. Where I shop, Lucini is a comparable Italian option. A fine XVOO will offer its own range of bitterness, and form a bond with the bitterness of the greenery.

• Four kinds of acid: Vinegar is the back bone of a vinaigrette. You can’t even say “vinaigrette” without saying “vinegar.” Diversity in the acid department brings complexity, depth of flavor and mystery. For these recipes we’ll need apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar and white balsamic vinegar (aka white Modena vinegar and white Italian condiment. If this can’t can’t be found, seek another dry vinegar made from white grapes, like sherry or Champagne vinegar. Alternatively, rice vinegar.) The fourth acid is lime or lemon juice.

• Sodium: Salt is the most overlooked and easiest pitfall for the novice vinaigrette-maker to remedy. These two recipes are distinguished by their use of soy sauce or salt crystals.

Ari LeVaux lives in Montana and New Mexico and can be reached at flash@flashinthepan.net.

Soy Sauce Vinaigrette

• 2 parts XVOO

• 1 part soy sauce

• 1 part vinegar (the vinegar part being an equal mix of apple cider, balsamic and white balsamic)

Mix well with a fork or a whisk. Test by dipping a leaf. Adjust the proportions to taste. Toss into a salad and go.

Salt Vinaigrette

One serving:

(Use the same proportions for larger batches)

• 2 tablespoons XVOO

• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice

• 1 tablespoon white balsamic

• ¼ teaspoon salt

Mix the dressing well. Pour into the salad, toss and serve.