Green Olive Dressing #AbramsDinnerParty

Once again, I'm working with Abrams Books to tell you about their cookbooks. I had a blast doing this last year (and I collected a lot of cookbooks!) so I was more than happy to sign on again.

One of the first books I got was Matty Matheson, A Cookbook. The author, in case you hadn't guessed, was Matty Matheson.

The book follows his culinary life, with the first recipes being family favorites, moving on through culinary school, and then finally through his restaurant years.

I settled on one of the family recipes, and this one is from the section about his inlaws. As much as I love eating at restaurants, and I like making complicated recipes when I'm in that mood, I'm always curious about recipes that have been passed down through families, particularly when they're nothing like the things I remember from my own family.

I know, salad dressings seem pretty simple, but I'll bet this one is quite different from ones you've made before. And I'm a sucker for salad dressings. If I pick up a cookbook at it has a recipe for salad dressing that looks interesting, it's a pretty sure bet I'll give it a try.

This was tasty and well-balanced. While it's meant as a salad dressing, I think it would be lovely on top of fish, as well.

I made one little "oops" with this dressing. The instructions say that you shouldn't let it emulsify. It's supposed to be chunks of olives and stuff floating in a vinegar and oil dressing.

I don't know if the issue was me being heavy-handed with the blender, or if my blender was just too overpowered to not emulsify this, but it started emulsifying pretty quickly, and then I just said the heck with it and blended it until it was almost smooth.

I can see how chunky bits of olive would be appealing, but I thought it was fine as its smoother version, too. This made just about a pint of dressing, so it's plenty for a party and it ought to keep well in the refrigerator for at least a few days.

Green Olive Dressing
Adapted from Matty Matheson, A Cookbook

2 cup pitted Cerignola olives
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 green onion, chopped
Zest and juice of one lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, diced
1 bunch parsley, leaves chopped
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
Salt and pepper
Salad greens, because if you're making dressing, you'd better make a dressing.

Put the olives, garlic, green onion, lemon zest and juice and olive oil into a blender. Pulse several times until it becomes frothy and lumpy, like a tapenade. Keep pulsing, but don't blend, since you don't want it to emulsify.

Pour this into a bowl and add the shallot, parsley, vinegar and canola oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve.

Just to make sure you know, I'll be getting all these books for free.

Better Than Store Bought Ranch Dip from The Weekday Lunches and Breakfasts Cookbook

A bottle of dressing. So un-photogenic.

Sometimes I am such a dork. I saw this recipe for ranch DIP and made it and wondered why it was so thick because in my head I was making ranch DRESSING.

Such a dork.

But I digress.

A while back, I got and reviewed The Weeknight Dinner Cookbook by Mary Younkin and I loved it. The recipes were creative, but easy. I literally could make a really good dinner in a short time.

Yeah, I work from home and in theory I could start cooking at noon if I wanted to, but when I get wrapped up in work, I often don't think about dinner until hungry happens.

So when I realized that Mary had another cookbook coming (The Weekday Lunches and Breakfasts Cookbook), I pre-ordered it on Amazon because I couldn't wait to get my grubby paws on it. And then I got another copy from the publisher to review. Oh well. I have plans for that second copy, no problem.

My usual lunches are either leftovers from a previous dinner, or I'll make something simple, like a sandwich. So the idea of a cookbook devoted to lunches wasn't entirely in my wheelhouse. Except that pretty much anything that's deemed a lunch meal (or even a breakfast) is perfectly acceptable for me any time of the day.

Tortilla Eggs with a side of pickled spicy vegetables.

I dived into the cookbook and came up with Tortilla Eggs, which is basically an egg cooked on a tortilla with some cheese and ... well, yum. I made it a couple times because it was so freaking simple and so satisfying.

But then I saw the ranch recipe.

I love making home made salad dressings of all kinds, and I'm always looking for new variations. Can I make a little confession? I never really had ranch dressing until I was an adult. When I was growing up, we made all kinds of vinaigrettes as well as Thousand Island. At restaurants, I'd order creamy garlic. But ranch was never on the radar.

But once I tried it, I admitted it was pretty good. And home made versions are just so much better.

So, I saw ranch, thought it was a dressing, and combined the ingredients. And there it was, too thick. But I fixed that with the addition of some buttermilk that I had on hand, and it suddenly became a very tasty salad dressing.

The recipe notes that you should add the dill to taste, and I think that's a good caution. When first made, the dill wasn't very bold, but after the dressing had time to rest, the dill flavor came forward a bit more. It wasn't bad at all, and of course it depends on how you're serving it. And I guess it depends on how fresh your dried dill is. So anyway, you might want to start with a bit less and you can always add a bit more.

Better Than Store Bought Ranch Dip
From The Weekday Lunches and Breakfasts Cookbook by Mary Younkin

1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon dried dill weed, adjust to taste
3/4 teaspoon dried parsley
3/4 teaspoon dried chives
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon finely ground pepper, adjust to taste
1/2 to 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice or plain white vinegar

Whisk all of the ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

The flavors will intensify after the dried herbs hydrate, so it's a good idea to make this in advance.

Note: to turn this into a dressing like I did, just add buttermilk or even plain milk until it's the consistency you like.

I got a copy of this book from the publisher at no cost, but also bought my own. 

Teriyaki-Shop-Style Salad Dressing from The Make Ahead Kitchen

How could I turn down a book called The Make Ahead Kitchen? Obviously I like the concept, since I also wrote a book about making things ahead.

While my book was all about bread, this book, by Annalise Thomas, is about making all sorts of things ahead. Sure, there's bread, but there are breakfasts, desserts, main dishes, and even a few drinks.

When I browsed through the book, the first thing I wanted to make was the Maple Bacon Overnight Cinnamon Rolls. Mmmm. Rolls. Cinnamon. Maple. Bacon.

But then the weather turned crazy hot and I decided that I didn't really need to be baking buns when it's nearing 100 degrees.

So I turned to something cooler. Like salad. The Best Homemade Greek Salad sounded good, but I've made tons of different Greek Salads, and I've posted a bunch of them, too. I've got that recipe set aside to make later. For me. Probably not for the blog.

But then I saw the Teriyaki-Shop-Style Salad, which is essentially a recipe for the salad dressing. I had all the ingredients, and I had lettuce.

This is quite a tasty dressing. I'm sure I'll be making it again. As far as the rest of the book, I'm going to spend some more time browsing through it.

Teriyaki-Shop-Style Salad (Creamy Sesame Salad Dressing)
From The Make Ahead Kitchen by Annalise Thomas. All rights reserved.

1 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 clove finely minced garlic (or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder)
Lots of black pepper

Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake well until completely blended. Taste for seasoning (adding a bit of salt or pepper if needed!) and serve over a simple green salad.

This dressing can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for up to two weeks. Shake well before serving.

Note: I stirred instead of shaking. It worked just fine.

I received a digital copy of the book for my use.

Three-ingredient blue cheese dressing

Blue cheese dressing seems so fancy, but it's really pretty simple. The flavor is mostly from the cheese, so you want to let that shine.

This dressing has only three ingredients, and it takes just a few minutes to prepare. I think the flavor is better after it's been refrigerated for a while - the blue cheese flavor seems to infuse the creamy dressing rather than just being bits of blue. But it's not a bad thing that it improves with age. If you're making this for a party or event, you can make it the day before, so it's one less thing to do on party day.

I was tempted to add herbs or other flavorings to this - a pinch of hot pepper or perhaps some other spice. But then I realized that additions would just take away from the blue cheese flavor. And if I wanted something else, I could simply add those flavors to my salad. Some fresh chopped parsley, perhaps?

You can make this as smooth or as chunky as you like. Just blend longer for a smoother dressing. But I do like the little pops of blue cheese, so I left it a little bit lumpy. The dressing gets thicker when you refrigerate, and the thickness depends a little on how this your Greek yogurt is. If it's too thick, just mix in some milk or buttermilk to thin it - or you could even add water to thin it. Or, you can leave it thick and use it as a dip for vegetables.

Blue Cheese Dressing

1 cup Greek-style yogurt
1/2 cup mayonnaise mayonnaise
4 ounces blue cheese, cut into chunks

Blend the yogurt and mayonnaise in your blender until combined. (You could also do this in a food processor, or by hand, but a blender makes it sooo easy.)

Add the blue cheese and pulse until the blue cheese is in bits as small as you like. Or keep blending until it's smooth, if that's what you prefer.

Taste and add salt or pepper, if desired. I liked it the way it was, but, hey, it's your taste buds you need to please.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate until needed.

Jam Vinaigrette for a Side Salad with #PotPiePlease

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #PotPiePlease #CollectiveBias

When I was a kid, pot pies were one of my favorite foods. After all, they were pies for dinner. What's not to love?

And I still adore them. They're an easy dinner, and filling. And there are a whole lot of choices.

The Marie Callender's pot pies come in two sizes - 16 or 10 ounces - and there are a whole lot of flavors, along with the more traditional ones. These are pot pies just like mom used to make.

Or, if I'm being totally honest, they're better than the ones mom made.

Marie Callender's pot pies are in the
single-serving frozen section at WalMart.

The choice of sizes is great, because people with small appetites can have a small pie and folks with large appetites can have a larger pie.

I think a smaller pie along with a salad is a perfect meal for me. I've got the comfort food goodness of pastry with a stew-like filling, along with crisp, fresh greenness of lettuce along with the brightness of a tangy salad dressing.

Since the pot pies can be baked in the oven or cooked in the microwave, they're great for busy nights and fun for little get-togethers around the holidays when you don't want to make a big fuss.

For singles or couples, a turkey pot pie along with some cranberry sauce and other favorite sides could work for a super casual Thanksgiving for folks who don't want to deal with a month of turkey leftovers.

But me, I love them for the nostalgia factor. And because they're so easy. These days, there are nights when I want to eat, but I don't want to make every little bit from scratch.

To go with my pot pie, I made a vinaigrette that included jam for fruity flavor. I used a cranberry jam, but raspberry, strawberry or any other red berry would taste good and give the dressing a pretty pink color.

If the color of the finished salad dressing doesn't matter, apricot or peach would make a neutral-colored dressing, or any other jam you like. Blueberry or blackberry would be interesting, right?

This dressing recipe makes enough dressing for two two four salads, depending on how large your salads are, and how much dressing you like on your salad.

Jam Vinaigrette

1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon red-colored jam (raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, red plum, etc.)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon dry tarragon
1/2 teaspoon dry thyme
1/4 teaspoon salt
Several grinds white pepper
1 teaspoon sugar, optional (or to taste)

Combine all of the ingredients (except the sugar) in a small jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake to emulsify the dressing.

Taste and add sugar if you think you need it - if your jam is very tart, you might need just a little extra sweetness. Add more salt or pepper, if desired.

Refrigerate the dressing until needed. It's best if you can make this ahead of time to let the herbs hydrate in the dressing - at least an hour. Shake again before serving.

Use this dressing to dress your salad just before serving.

Here's more about Marie Callender's Pies - check out all the flavors! You can also follow them on Facebook.

I cooked the chicken pie for this post, but I bought a selection of flavors.
Because ... pot pie! With a flaky crust. It's comfort food!

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #PotPiePlease #CollectiveBias

Chunky Blue Cheese and Buttermilk Salad Dressing (or vegetable dip)

When I was a kid, I loved pretty much any cheese I encountered, from mild brick cheese to sharp cheddar. I loved cottage cheese and cream cheese. I loved ricotta in lasagna (although when I tasted it plain and cold, I thought it was terrible).

I even liked the stronger cheeses that made rare appearances in the home fridge.

But blue cheese ... I was rather skittish.

For one thing, I don't think my mom ever bought it, so it only showed up on restaurant menus as a salad dressing. Since I loved Thousand Island dressing, I always ordered that. So I didn't get much chance to try blue cheese - even as a dressing.

I was also a little bit afraid of it. You see, I'm allergic to penicillin, and the "blue" in blue cheese is actually a penicillin mold. So for quite a long time, I was afraid to eat it. I wasn't sure if I'd have a bad reaction, and I didn't want to take a chance.

Then I did some research and found out that people with allergies to the drug can safely eat the cheese.

I started with a cautious little nibble and then a little more and a little more. These days, if no one was watching me, I could probably polish off a giant wedge of the stuff.

Most of the blue cheese that comes into this house gets eaten on a cracker, but I also like blue cheese dressing. Which also happens to be great as a dip for fresh vegetables.

The little secret in this dressing is that some of the blue cheese is blended into the dressing, while some is added in chunks and crumbs. Every little bit of the dressing has the blue cheese in the background and then you get a little chunk of blue cheese and it's a "pow" of blue cheese flavor.

This is a super-simple dressing, so the cheese really stands out - it's absolutely not ranch with blue. It's very simply blue cheese dressing with no herbs or other strong flavors competing.

You can used any blue cheese you love. I used Point Reyes Buttermilk Blue, because it's one of my favorites.

Chunky Blue Cheese and Buttermilk Salad Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup buttermilk (milk is fine, too)
Pinch of salt
4 ounces blue cheese, divided

Blend the mayonnaise, sour cream, buttermilk, salt, and HALF of the blue cheese in a blender until it's smooth.

Meanwhile, crumble the remaining half of the cheese into small bits.

Stir the blue cheese bits into the smooth mixture and transfer to a storage container. Refrigerate until needed.

Vegetarian (could be vegan) Caesar Salad Dressing

Yet another cookbook has crossed my path via the cookbook exchange group I belong to. This time, the book is The Pollan Family Table by Corky, Lori, Dana, and Tracy Pollan. If those names aren't familiar to you, the name Michael Pollan might ring a bell. The authors of this particular book are his mom and sisters.

Whenever I get a cookbook, I look for things I can make right away, without a trip to the store. If that's not possible, then I hope to find a recipe that uses ingredients that are normal around here. Because it's pretty rare for any recipe to use the whole quantity of anything, so I don't want to be done with making a single recipe and end up with a half-dozen jars with one teaspoon removed from each.

The first recipe that caught my eye was a caprese-style pasta, with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil. I always have some kind of pasta - the recipe called for shells, but I used mini wagon wheels instead.

I had tomatoes from the farmers market, and I had some basil growing. I had olive oil and fresh garlic, too, so the only thing I needed to complete the recipe was the fresh mozzarella, and that's pretty easy to find at my local grocer.

The pasta was good, but not spectacular. It reminded me a lot of a recipe by Giada De Lauretiis that I've made a number of times (with variations, of course) called Pasta Sciue Sciue.

In Giada's recipe the tomatoes and garlic are lightly cooked, and the cheese is added to the hot pasta in the pan, along with the other ingredients. The cheese melts just a little, and gets stretchy.

With the Pollan recipe, the "sauce" is raw, and the hot pasta is added to the room temperature sauce. The pasta warms the tomatoes and cheese, but the ingredients stay pretty much raw.

I have to say I like the Giada version a little better. I like the melted cheese in the Giada version, and I liked the warmed tomatoes as well. Meanwhile, I thought the raw garlic was a little too strong in the Pollan version. Cooking the garlic, for sure, would have reduced its bite.

Still, the Pollan was a good recipe, and I might keep it as a cold pasta recipe, cutting the garlic way back or using roasted garlic instead. And if the plan was to serve the pasta cold, I'd add the tomatoes and the cheese after the pasta is totally cool. While the cheese never fully melted and got stretchy as in Giada's version, it did get soft enough to glue itself to the pasta once it was chilled.

The second recipe I tried from The Pollan Family Table was a vegetarian version of the classic Caesar salad. I think it's a brilliant idea. Not because I need a vegetarian version, but because I don't use a whole lot of anchovies, so opening a jar for just one or two is annoying.

I thought I had everything I needed for the recipe, but there was no Dijon mustard in the refrigerator, and the mustard bottle in the pantry wasn't Dijon. So, I used a brown mustard instead. If you have Dijon, feel free to use it; if not, use what you have.

My first try with this recipe was good, but I thought it needed some tweaking. Either my garlic was super-strong or the Pollans are concerned about vampires. A salad dressing should be flavorful when you taste it alone since a small amount of it is added to a pretty large amount of lettuce - which isn't exactly the most flavorful leaf on the planet. But I thought this was a bit over the top with both the garlic and the lemon.

So, I went at it again and made adjustments, and I made a larger quantity. While I don't have a problem with making a single-serve quantity of something like vinegar, oil, and herb mix, if I'm going to make a more complicated dressing, I tend to make enough to last for a while.

And then, since I was re-doing everything anyway, I decided that the capers needed to be chopped. Yes, they're small to begin with, but I thought smaller pieces that would show up on more bites of salad made more sense than finding just a few whole capers in a serving of salad.

I have several other recipes bookmarked in the cookbook, but if I find one that requires garlic, I'm going to cut the amount in half - at least - and add more after tasting if it needs it, particularly if the garlic is used raw.

No-Anchovy Caesar Salad Dressing
Vaguely adapted from The Pollan Family Table

1/4 cup mayonnaise*
1 tablespoon brown mustard
1 small clove garlic, minced (or to taste)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon (or to taste) fresh lemon juice (or to taste)
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire Sauce**
2 teaspoons capers, chopped, plus
1/2 teaspoon of the caper liquid
Salt and pepper, to taste
For serving:
Torn romaine lettuce
Freshly grated parmesan cheese
Croutons

Whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard and garlic (if you're worried about how strong it will be, hold some back). Add the olive oil while continuing to whisk, or add in small quantities, whisking after each addition has emulsified.

Whisk in the lemon juice (start with about half - you can add the rest after tasting), Worcestershire sauce, capers, caper liquid, a pinch of salt, and several grinds of black pepper.

Taste for seasoning, and add more garlic, lemon, salt, or pepper, if desired. If the dressing is too tart (depending on the tartness of both the lemon and the mustard, it's possible!) add a pinch of sugar to counteract the tartness.

To serve, dress the salad, then grate on the parmesan. Caesar salad is traditionally served with croutons, but while I like croutons as a snack (yes, I'm odd) I don't really care for them on salad.

A traditional Caesar salad doesn't have a lot of extras, but you can use the dressing on your favorite tossed salad, too. Or drizzle it over fresh vegetables.

*If you want this to be vegan, look for a vegan alternative for the mayonnaise. I don't have recommendations, but there are a lot of options.

**Not all Worcestershire sauces are vegetarian! Make sure you read the label, or use a steak sauce (like A1) and read the label. I find that black vinegar, a condiment you can find in Asian markets, has a similar flavor and would work in this dressing. Read the label if you plan on using it.

Lemon-Basil-Dill Salad Dressing

I love trying new products. I'm always scouring the grocery store for things I haven't tried yet. I'm always throwing things into my cart with no clue how I'm going to use them.

I bring them home and use them and sometimes I write about them or mention them in recipes.

It's even better when products come to my door and they don't cost me anything, because I get to play and there's no risk of wasting money. If I don't like the products, I don't write about them. If I like them, I usually end up buying them again and again. There are quite a few products that I got as samples that I now use all the time.

When Litehouse offered me some of their spices, I was intrigued. They call them "Instantly Fresh" and say that they refresh in liquid to become like fresh herbs.

Well, that's interesting.

I love fresh herbs, but I hate buying a bunch of herbs when I only need a tablespoon or two. In the summer, I grow a few herbs outside, and in winter, I have some potted herbs. But I also use a lot of dried herbs as a substitute. In some cases, I prefer dried herbs. In other cases, it would be nice to have fresh herbs, but dried are more convenient - and less expensive.

So the idea of convenient dried herbs that tasted like fresh - that sounded like something I could really use.

Out of all the herbs I was sent, I used the basil the most, simply because that's what I needed for recipes. I noticed that when I added it to tomato sauce it brightened and was very fragrant. But then, of course. I cooked it.

Then the lightbulb lit. I was using them like I'd use dried herbs when I should have been using them like fresh herbs. So I started thinking about how I use fresh herbs. First, I used the dill on cooked potatoes and on buttered noodles. Then I decided to make a salad dressing that would feature the herbs.

And here's the deal - the herbs really did taste fresh. I don't think anyone would mistake the chopped basil for a recently-picked basil leaf, but the flavor was more like fresh than dried..

This is going to be good for salad dressings, uncooked preparations like dips, and for a finishing herb like on the potatoes, or a final flourish of basil on pasta.

I didn't receive the cilantro to try, but I bought some, because that's one herb that always thwarts me.

I often buy cilantro to use in guacamole or salsa, but there's only two of us, so I often don't need the whole bunch. If I try to store the leftovers, it usually goes bad by the time I need more. Having a dried alternative would make sense for those times when I need just enough cilantro for one avocado's worth of guacamole.

So ... I bought it and I tried it, and it did rehydrate and taste like cilantro should. I have to say that I was pleased.

Lemon-Basil-Dill Salad Dressing

2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon Litehouse basil
1/2 teaspoon Litehouse Dill
Pinch of Litehouse mint
1/2 teaspoon salt
Several grinds black pepper
Pinch of garlic powder
1 teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoons (1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) olive oil

Combine all of the ingredients in a small jar and shake until emulsified. Serve on salad or vegetables.

Thanks to Litehouse Foods for sending me samples of their Instantly Fresh Herbs.

Raspberry Vinaigrette

A while back, the Oregon Raspberry Blackberry Commission contacted me about writing a post about their berries. Specifically frozen berries.

I made a few recipes and they were good, but for one reason or another, I didn't want to post them. Sometimes the photos didn't work out, and other times I wanted to tweak the recipes further.

I set the berry cooking aside for a while, even though I had more berries in the freezer. I knew I'd get back to them eventually, because frozen berries are so versatile. They're great when berry season is over, but they're handy to have, even during berry season.

See, when you buy fresh berries, you really need to use them pretty quickly. If you shop on the weekend, but you're planning on using the berries on Wednesday or Thursday, you're probably going to need to sort through the berries to pick out the bad ones. It's best to buy them and use them in a day or two.

But that's not always practical. I don't live horribly far from a grocery store, but I still don't want to drive there more often than I have to.

Unlike fresh berries, frozen berries are just as good a week or a month later, as long as you keep them safely frozen. And they're always there when you decide to make something on a whim. No need to run to the store and hope that the berries are looking good.

So anyway, I finally grabbed some frozen raspberries (Stalbush Island Farms is an Oregon brand, by the way) and made a very tasty vinaigrette.

Since this vinaigrette includes both the juice and pulp of the berries, it's pretty thick. Which means you don't need a lot of oil - which is what makes the emulsion with the acidic component in a normal vinaigrette. A little oil is used to add the richness and savory flavor, though.

This is amazing on salads, and wonderful drizzled on vegetables. It would also be a lovely glaze on chicken or pork. You could use it as a marinade.

I'm pretty sure you will think of plenty of other uses after you make it. It's really versatile.

The easiest way to get separate juice and pulp from berry seeds is to let the berries thaw and then let a juicer do the work for you. If you don't have a juicer, you can use a blender to break them down a bit, then pass them through a fine-mesh strainer to get rid of the seeds.

You could also use a food mill to mash the berries and get rid of the seeds.

Some folks don't mind the seeds, but I don't care for them. If you like seeds, leave them in.

I used red raspberries, because I wanted the bright color. You could certainly use black raspberries, or a berry mix.

Raspberry Vinaigrette

4 ounces red raspberry juice and pulp (extracted from 8 ounces frozen Oregon berries)
2 ounces red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon prepared brown mustard
2 ounces olive oil

Combine all the ingredients in a jar (I used a dressing shaker with a handy pouring spout, but you can use a jar with a lid) and shake to combine.

Taste for seasoning, and add more salt, sugar, or red wine vinegar to adjust it to your taste.

If it's too thick to pour, you can add a little water to thin it out.

Serve immediately, or refrigerate until needed.

This was particularly good on asparagus along with a basil mayo drizzle. it sounds like an unlikely combination, but it was really really (really) good.

Thanks to the Oregon Raspberry Blackberry Commission for sponsoring this post!