All Dressed Up - Tasty Homemade Dressings

Home-made pie, my anchovy paste tube, and the cutest S&P shakers EVER!!

Today I had one of those wonderful days when there was nothing pressing on my "To-do" list.  My husband got home late last night after being back East for three weeks, and we had a lovely day of doing not much at all.  The dogs were thrilled to get him back and took up a good deal of the afternoon playing, getting their bellies rubbed, and being snuggled.  While the dogs were throwing their version of a welcome home celebration, I was preparing mine; a from-scratch, all the bells and whistles feast of my husband's favorite foods.  Lasagna, caesar salad, and strawberry rhubarb pie. I started around 1:30 making my the tomato sauce so that it could bubble away for an hour or so in order to reach tomato sauce perfection.  I made pastry for my pie and got to try out a few jars of the strawberry rhubarb pie filling I made a few weeks ago.  Once the tomato sauce was ready, I started assembling my lasagnas.  I made enough to make two large lasagnas, one for now and one for the freezer.  Once the second lasagna was in the oven and the first was setting on the counter, all that was left to prepare for our feast was to whip up the Caesar salad, including a homemade dressing.

Because traditional Caesar salad dressing contains raw eggs, it can be rather controversial.  I found a few recipes that got around the raw egg by using either cooked egg yolk, or mayonnaise. I decided to opt for a mayonnaise based dressing recipe I found as part of the recipe for Caesar Salad Supreme on allrecipes.com..
 The only change I made was instead of using anchovy fillets I used anchovy paste. (My husband was kind enough to decorate the plain tube for me!).  The dressing was delicious; very zesty and garlicky.  If you've only ever had bottled Caesar dressing, which in my opinion is usually all about the parmesan, you may be surprised by how different the real deal tastes.  The parmesan cheese is definitely there, but there's so much more. It's a more sophisticated taste, but it's classic, and I strongly recommend that you try it.

Another thing that I strongly recommend you try is making your own salad dressings more often.  There are so many great recipes out there.  Just this week I whipped up an Orange Poppy-seed dressing that was the perfect accompaniment for spinach salad with cherry tomatoes and supremes of orange.  It was great, and it was so much better than a salty, too sweet bottled dressing.  And it was so easy to make!  Most dressings can be easily assembled using either a blender or a mason jar.  I'm not usually one to plug a product, but I have been using my Magic Bullet blender to make salad dressings (both the Caesar and the Poppy-seed) with great results.  I've also used a regular blender to make the Poppy-seed in the past, and it worked great, but I found that the smaller Magic Bullet worked really well and was easier to clean up.  Presentation is simple and sweet as well; after I finish mixing up the dressing I just pour it into a cruet or mason jar.  It looks so pretty!

So, over the weekend, flip to the salad chapter of your favorite cookbook and give one (or more!) of the dressings a try!  It'll be the perfect accompaniment to your weekend barbeque, brunch, or welcome home celebration!  Enjoy!

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