Salads

Balsamic mustard dressing home-made recipe

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With all the choices and availability of pre-fabricated aka prefab sauces and dressings it is indeed easy to grab a bottle and use, but it never beats the home-made product. Even better once you understand the technique and mastered the basic recipe you can tweak to your culinary heart adding your favorite taste and flavor personal preferences. This is my Balsamic Mustard dressing recipe.

  • 1/2 small onion diced finely
  • 1 clove garlic minced finely
  • 1/2 cup olive oil extra virgin or light
  • 1 tablespoon mustard wholeseed mustard, dijonaisse
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar red/dragon vinegar, Chinese black vinegar, rice vinegar
  • 1/2 tablespoon honey or fine sugar
  •  salt & pepper to taste
  • handful mix fresh herbs 2 sprigs each; oregano, rosemary, basil, chopped finely

Balsamic-mustard dressing: Cut the onion and dice finely, mince garlic, slice finely all the herbs. In a bowl add the onion and garlic pour the vinegar on top and let it blend first, than add the mustard, olive oil followed by the chopped herbs. Whisk to emulsify everything together or give it a good shake in a jar. Taste, add salt & pepper to taste and any adjustments if needed.

Instead of my homemade Balsamic Mustard Herb dressing, you can opt for a much easier American Honey Dijon dressing recipe as published on About.com, which I often make as well.

For 2 cups of Honey Dijon dressing:

  • 1/4 cup Dijon Mustard
  • 1/2 cup Honey
  • 1/2 cup Cider Vinegar
  • 2/3 cup Olive oil
  • Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk vigorously until emulsified or have everything in a jar and shake vigorously till combined and dressing consistency.
  2. For a creamier touch add 2-3 tablespoon of mayonnaise.
  3. Use this as your basis and add fresh herbs or other ingredients to give it your own twist, you can easily leave out the honey if you like a sharper taste.

Red Beet Salad recipe with orange, feta cheese, mint

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Red Beet Salad recipe with orange, feta cheese and mint, what’s not to love. To begin with, the taste and texture followed by health benefits and support of detoxification. The idea of eating and cleansing suits me fine with these five reasons.

  1. Colour attraction, deep burgundy red (all natural beetroot juice is a red food and beverages colouring).
  2. Sweet slight earthy taste and crunchy texture
  3. antioxidants
  4. anti-inflammatory
  5. detoxification

 Whether you roast it whole, blend into a classic soup or drink as juice like the Olympians does – beetroot is low in fat, full of vitamins and minerals and packed with powerful antioxidants – a health-food titan. (source link: BBC Good Food – Beetroots)

And that sums it up why I keep buying this power food with this recipe I finally had the whole family fully agreeing not to overlook this green but to make this Red Beet Salad with orange, feta cheese and mint recipe more often. The Beetroot has achieved superfood status, according to scientist claimed beetroot juice is capable of boosting athletic performance. Read more: “Boom time for beetroot” DailyMail online article.

Beetroot Salad Orange, Feta, Mint 1

Red Beet Salad preparations

For the balsamic mustard dressing with fresh herbs, I choose to add a Dutch touch with “Groninger mosterd, grof & pittig” whole seed, grainy mustard for a different flavour and sharpness complementing the beets. I used to whisk everything together but it is much easier to put all dressing ingredients in a jar and give it a good shake, the dressing will thicken nicely blending everything together.

Red Beet salad Orange, Feta, Mint 2

Red Beet Salad with Orange, Feta Cheese, Mint

Pour the dressing over the beets first and mix before tossing in the orange segments, as you can see on the photo image the beet juice bleeds very quickly coating everything in red. What you can’t see, smell or taste, unfortunately, is the ‘cheese’, at the local Turkish supermarket shop I bought their artisan-made sheep cheese for the first time and it was so much better than the standard supermarket packed versions.

[recipe]