The Green Goddess
Think of all the excellent American salads. There’s the cheesy, garlic laced Caesar, the creamy kicker that is the blue cheese wedge, the Waldorf…actually the Waldorf can be a bit like eating gravel mixed with mayonnaise, and let’s not even start looking into the ‘jello salads’…but my point is that there are some beauts out there. Which makes me wonder why we haven’t really fallen for the green goddess.
It’s a dressing, rather than a ‘whole salad’, and I can’t get enough of it. Basically, it consists of a truckload of herbs, avocado, spring onions (green things, see?), garlic, and then anchovies – those magical, concentrated-tasty transformers. Lots of recipes add mayonnaise to bind but to me, a mayo bound salad is a recipe for feeling sick afterwards, so I use yoghurt. It’s creamy, fresh, punchy as hell, and healthy. So yeah its basically witchcraft. Oh and you can use it in loads of ways. There’s the obvious, dressing a salad way, then there’s the dip way (see pic) or there’s the sauce way, by which I mean that it’s awesome with roast chicken, and also fish. Oh and then it’s brilliant in sandwiches, too. I think I’ve covered all the ways now.
Green Goddess Dressing Recipe
4 anchovy fillets or 1 tablespoon fish sauce
A large bunch of basil
Standard bunch of chives
2 spring onions
1 avocado, peeled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tablespoons of natural (full fat) yoghurt
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or cider vinegar, or lemon juice)
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Put everything in a blender. Blend.
Taste it – dressings are about balance and that depends on the creaminess of your avocado, the acidity of your vinegar and so on. If it tastes a bit ‘flat’, add some more vinegar and/or salt and see how that makes a difference.