Tomato Dressing

13 grape tomatoes, sliced in half
2 tablespoons fine salted butter
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Melt butter over low heat. Add tomatoes, cut side down to pan, tomatoes will barely simmer. Once tomatoes have begun to wither and wrinkle, about 10 minutes Remove from heat to a blender. Add red wine vinegar and puree until smooth. Season with salt.

Sweet Potato with Salad and Dirty Cowboy Dressing

Serves 2

Dirty Cowboy Dressing
The yam was so sweet smelling while it cooked, that I knew it needed several bitter flavor counterpoints: coffee and endives.

1 tablespoon fresh mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
5 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon finely minced red onion or shallot
1 teaspoon freshly ground coffee
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon fresh chopped cilantro leaves
2 leaves lemon basil, finely chopped

1 large garnet yam, cut in 1 1/2 inch pieces
2 Belgian endives, chopped into 1" rounds
1 small head red leaf lettuce, torn
1 avocado, pitted and cut in 1 inch pieces

In a large bowl, whisk together the first ten ingredients until uniform and smooth, set aside. Place the yam in a small saucepot with enough cold water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Remove when yams are easily pierced with a paring knife, drain. Set hot yams in dressing, toss to coat. Divide greens between two plates, top with yam salad and avocado.

1 -2 -3 Vinaigrette

In French cooking there are a few standard sauces that serve as the base for variations. Technically they're called "mother" sauces. Appropriately, I learned this from the mother of my French exchange program family. I always think of it as 1 - 2 - 3 sauce because that is the proportion of the recipe. One mustard, two acid, three oil. In any vinaigrette you need three basic elements: mustard, an acid (like a lemon juice, verjus, or vinegar), and an oil.

I call this sauce a base or "Mother" sauce because you can easily derive many variations of vinaigrette from it. Switch a sesame oil and a rice wine vinegar and the sauce has Asian flavors. Substitute a gentle hazelnut oil for the olive oil or a purple mustard for the traditional Dijon, or use a grainy mustard… you get the idea, the variations are infinite.


1 - 2 - 3 Vinaigrette
You need a lot less dressing than you think. A rough estimate is 5 cups of loosely packed bite sized pieces of salad to one recipe of vinaigrette.

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
3 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
pinch sea salt
pinch freshly ground pepper


The trick to getting a really creamy vinaigrette lies in emulsifying it properly.
Whisk together the salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar to form a uniform paste. Add the olive oil in an extremely slow steady drizzle while you whisk briskly. Every once in a while to check the olive oil is fully encorporated and the mixture looks creamy. This recipe can be multiplied and made in the blender.


There are a couple of things I like to keep in mind when I make a salad. I love to make the dressing in the bottom of the bowl, before I put in the greens. I set the greens loosely on top. This way the salad is all ready to go to the table and await tossing. If you toss the salad just before you serve it, you end up with crisp greens rather than the wilty sludge that comes from a premature tossing. When you do serve it, toss the salad a lot more than you generally believe is necessary. That way everything is definitely coated.