Forever Nigella: Salad Days

 

One thing I love about Nigella Lawson is how she can use simple ingredients found in the pantry to create an equally simple, but delicious meal.  Some of the best recipes come about just by scrounging around in the fridge or the pantry and using up what you have lying around. 

This month’s Forever Nigella is hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen and the theme is Salad Days.  After looking through as many of Ms. Lawson’s salad recipes as I could find, what tempted me most wasn’t a recipe for a salad, but a recipe for a salad dressing.  Using some pantry staples, you can create a quick and easy homemade Honey Mustard Dressing. 

Click here for Nigella’s recipe for Golden Honey Mustard Dressing.

As you can see in the recipe, Nigella gives the measurements for each ingredient, but I think she probably wings it a little.  This recipe is ridiculously easy.  Just assemble your ingredients and add to a jar, then shake, shake, shake!  This could be very therapeutic after a rough day.  Two things to think about with this recipe: First, I’m not sure, but I think that this recipe calls for Rapeseed oil (as mentioned in the introduction) instead of Grapeseed oil as listed in the ingredients.  Rapeseed oil and Canola oil are practically the same thing, so that’s what I used and it was perfect.  Second, it took me a lemon and a half to get the right amount of juice.  But I could probably have done well enough with just one lemon.  My suggestion is to add half of the suggested lemon juice, shake and taste.  You can always add more later.

So what kind of salad goes with a dressing this tasty?  I started with some leftover salad greens.  Then I searched through my refrigerator where I found some bacon bits, shredded cheese, a hard-boiled egg and a leftover fried chicken tender.  A few croutons from the pantry and my salad was ready to receive a lovely drizzle of golden dressing.  There’s something very comforting about the flavors of the egg and honey mustard dressing, it’s hard for me to resist.  It would have been fantastic with some cucumbers as well, but the point I’m making here is that I used what I had.  And it was delicious!

 

Here’s a reminder of the rules: Forever Nigella #5 “Salad Days”
Challenge: To prepare and blog any Nigella salad recipe
Deadline: Sunday, May 29 at midnight wherever you are.
Round up: By the next weekend.
There are:
No rules about how often you must take part
No rules about stuff being secret until certain dates
No rules that everyone cook exactly the same thing
No rules about not being able to submit to any other blog events – but do check it doesn’t contravene any rules the other guys may have.
But there are 3 rules:
1. We want everyone to keep buying lots and lots of Nigella books so that she keeps writing them so you must NOT reproduce recipes verbatim as shown in Nigella’s publications. If you are sticking exactly to the original recipe, just tell us which book it was from and if available, provide a link to it on Nigella.com http://www.nigella.com which publishes a lot (but not all) of her recipes. (You may also find some recipes on sites for some TV stations and newspapers).  Alternatively, you may blog an adapted Nigella recipe so long as you have changed at least two ingredients and write the directions in your own words. Tell us what you changed and why.
2. Publish your Forever Nigella blog post (in English) by the closing date including the latest Forever Nigella graphic and giving a link to this post and the Forever Nigella home page http://blog.maisoncupcake.com/forever-nigella .  Your entry must have been published since the announcement post. You may only re-blog something from your archives if you republish it with the badge and links to this post before the deadline.
3.Email the details to me at Dom@thepersuaders.co.uk  and please c.c. sarahATmaisoncupcakeDOTcom – I need your name, your blog name, a link to your post and a photo no more than 300 pixels wide. No billboard sized images please.

Salad Days Round-Up