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Scientists hail healthy olive oil (BBC Oct 23 2004)

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Getting the habit of making and using your own quick, simple olive oil and vinegar salad dressing is the best way to cut out store-bought mayonnaise and bottled dressings with inferior fats and additives. The first recipe is from The Essential Mediterranean : How Regional Cooks Transform Key Ingredients into the World's Favorite Cuisines by Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

The second recipe, for mayonnaise, we've adapted from a copycat for Hellman's. In place of "any oil" we recommend olive oil. If you add turmeric as well, your mayonnaise will look sunny. Great for coleslaw.

Many Americans grew up associating olive oil with Popeye's wife. Olive oil and spinach is a good combination, actually, but this oil is no joke, it's a precious health and culinary resource. Today some small-town supermarkets stock a range of olive oils from around the mediterranean - Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey-- at reasonable prices. Some people prefer light, bland oil while others enjoy the look of a greener oil and a grener oil's fruiter flavor. If you're just now switching to oilive oil, you'll soon learn to use only what smells and tastes good to you. Expect your taste buds to evolve.

SALAD DRESSING

Vinaigrette

"In the olive oil world of the Mediterranean, ranch, blue cheese and Thousand Island dressings are unknown. It is considered sufficient to dress a salad with three parts of fine, fresh extra-virgin olive oil and one part of good red wine vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice. The only additions tolerated are salt and pepper, and perhaps a bit of garlic; sometimes in France a dollop of good mustard is stirred in too."

-- Excerpted from the Olives and Olive Oil chapter

Middle Eastern Lemon Dressing for Salads

(Makes about 1/4 cup, enough for a salad for 4)

"This is the way I learned to make salad dressing in the Middle East where, because of Islamic prohibitions, wine vinegar is not much used. It's the best dressing I know of. This will make enough for a green salad for 4."

Combine the garlic and salt in a salad bowl. Using the back of a tablespoon, crush the garlic and salt to a paste. Stir in the olive oil and the lemon juice; taste and adjust the seasoning. Pile the salad ingredients on top and mix with the dressing just before serving.

Olive oil alternative to Hellman's

1 egg (room temp, preferably free-range organic)
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. dry turmeric powder
1 1/4 c. olive oil
dash cayenne pepper
3 T. lemon juice or vinegar
crushed chopped garlic to taste
Place egg, mustard, turmeric, salt, cayenne pepper, garlic and 1/4 c. oil in blender and blend on low. While the machine is blending, SLOWLY pour in another 1/2 c. oil. You may have to stop and scrape down the mayo. Add the lemon juice/vinegar and the remaining 1/2 c. oil. Blend until well combined. Store in refrigerator, tightly covered.

For more on choosing and using oilive oils see:

Olive Oil - what's cooking America

photo credits: stockxchange

This page made August 27, 2003. Last updated Aug 5 2004. Editor, J. Strax.