Home made salad dressing tastes so much better than anything in a bottle. You can select and pronounce each of the ingredients that you pour onto your fresh summer vegetables {except for maybe the Worcestershire sauce}. If your fortunate enough to to find some crab in your traps this summer, why not compose a crab Louie for your pod drizzled with the classic: freshly made Thousand Island dressing? Served with crusty bread it is an ideal one dish meal to serve for an alfresco lunch or dinner.
The ingredients for this salad are up for innovation and interpretation, of course. For the base I’ve combined fresh garden lettuces, green onion slices, slices of hearts of palm and corn cut off the cob which I tossed in in the freshly made Thousand Island dressing {recipe below}. Other delicious additions could include sliced radishes, cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, beets and whatever else looks fresh in your refrigerator or garden.
To top the salad I distributed plenty of freshly cooked and picked sweet crab meat, quartered hard boiled eggs and snips of fresh chives. Quartered tomatoes and slices of avocado would also look nice on top. I pushed the base of the claws into the center of the salad and added a handful of chives to the center for a more dramatic presentation.
Here is is the recipe for the dressing, it takes just minutes to make and will last in the refrigerator for a week.
Thousand Island Dressing
{yields just about 2 cups of dressing}
Ingredients
1 cup mayonnaise
¼ cup chili sauce (ketchup style)
1 medium to large sized shallot
1 stalk celery (cut 2″ pieces)
5 cornichons
1-1″ slice of red pepper
1 quartered hard boiled egg
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon paprika
Preparation
Put all ingredients, except the egg, in blender. Cover and blend on a medium setting until vegetables are coarsely chopped (just a couple of seconds). Add egg. Cover and blend just until egg is chopped (another second).
Wishing you many fresh, alfresco meals for the coming weeks….
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