Vinaigrettes are amazing when it comes to mixing up the flavours in meals.  You can use them to dress up salads, or as sauces, or even marinades.

Most vinaigrettes have a ratio of 1 part oil to 3 parts acid, and this is an excellent base from which to experiment.  However, in this recipe, you’ll see we’ve mixed things up a bit.  This is mainly because orange juice is not particularly acidic, so it doesn’t cut the oil quite as much.  No problem.. we just use less oil 🙂

This dressing will keep about 5 days, if you don’t use it all on the Quinoa and Chicken Salad, which I suggest you do 🙂

Ingredients

  • 1 cups freshly-squeezed Citrus juice (remove pips, leave in the fruit cells) – I used orange
  • ½ cup fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp honey
  • 1 tsp citrus zest
  • ½ tsp cumin seeds (whole and toasted)
  • ½ tsp salt

Method:

  1. Simmer the orange juice until it has reduced to about half the amount and let cool completely.
  2. Use an immersion blender to combine all ingredients, and store in the fridge.  This dressing goes well with quinoa and chopped chicken salad.

Note: Why do you have to chop herbs first if you’re going to use a blender anyway?

When you try to blend whole leaves, they tend to wrap around the blender, and stop it from doing its thing.  If you chop the leaves first, the blender can work properly, and everything is blended evenly.  Also you don’t have to do the walk of shame pulling soggy leaves off the blades of the blender (unplugged, of course) and hauling them back to the cutting board to cut them again.

JanetC

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