I don’t often take my inspiration from YouTube, however, in the last few weeks cooking videos have been appearing in my recommended list, and who am I to resist clickbait, I usually end up watching them. Thanks to YouTube, I now butterfly my chicken breasts, I dissolved with gratin dauphinois cravings and finally made one, and I stumbled across a great way to use up any tired fresh herbs in the fridge. Enter, the excellent green goddess dressing.
Yes, this is an ‘excellent’ salad dressing. Honestly, I’ve had it up to here (indicates above head) with SEO and all of that surrounding sensationalism, how many millions of ‘best green goddess salad dressings’ are out there do you think? I’m never going to taste them all but I can testify that this one is excellent, all lime green and garlicky.
I first made it the other week as we had far too much coriander lying around and no intention of using it. Roughly chopped, it was chucked into a jug with olive oil, a bit of grated garlic, some pine nuts, salt, lemon juice and a splash of water. A quick and violent whizz with the hand blender, although not as strong as a NutriBullet and the like, did the job and a thick, almost moussey, green dressing emerged. I poured it over chopped spring onion, cabbage and cucumber, all crunchy and cold, and some cooked quinoa. I then mixed it altogether like I was George in George’s Marvellous Medicine stirring his poison. Although this vivid green is the colour of pure health.
I wolfed down that coriander green goddess salad for my lunch, eating it out of a plastic tub at my friend’s house. With red cabbage and also cubed beetroot bleeding out their inky colour, the salad isn’t a looker; it’s not something you want to post to Instagram, but here, in a newsletter, we know it’s the inside that counts.
I’ve since made it twice more, this time with basil and parsley which gives the dressing a pesto vibe, especially with that creamy nutty taste of pine nuts or whatever nuts you have in your cupboard. It’s an experimental dressing, one that doesn’t need precise quantities, although don’t go overboard with water - I did and I poured what looked like herb juice down the sink.
Here are some rough quantities:
A bunch of soft herbs, whatever you have to spare
Half a clove of garlic
Juice of half a lemon
A handful of nuts - cashews, almonds, pine nuts etc
Olive oil - a few tablespoons
If you’re using a hand blender that doesn’t have much oomph, add some water - 1:2 ratio of water to olive oil.
Salt
As I work from home, raiding the fridge is my daily dilemma but now, thanks to this excellent green goddess dressing, I am officially lazy with my fridge raids. A salad is now interesting with all these fresh, vibrant flavours tussling together on my plate. And I almost feel idle preparing a packed lunch for a little work day at my friend’s flat thanks to this jarred dressing sitting smugly in my fridge. So, thanks YouTube for knowing me better than I know myself.
Do you enjoy herby green goddess dressings and do you have a recipe? What do you add to yours?