Artisan Vinaigrette

Holy crap! My manufactured outrage has made it to the Huffington Post. I am like the Keith Olbermann of processed foods. And like our dear Mr. Olbermann, I had a meltdown that necessitated a little time off.

...Okay, not really I just got busy with the farm and not a little lazy about writing. But I am back--and I brought salad dressing!

Artisan Vinaigrette, to be exact.

I firmly place salad dressing of any sort, but especially vinaigrettes, into the category of, "any a-hole can make that." In fact, dressings reside next to soup in that filing system. A vinaigrette is just a little oil, a little acid and, if you feel like it, a little emulsifier - like mustard -whisked together in a haphazard way. In fact, someone once asked me for a recipe for my Greek lemon vinaigrette and I just stared at them incredulously before finally saying, "It's dressing. It doesn't have a recipe."

This particular vinaigrette looks like it is just crappy Caesar salad dressing with the anchovies and Parmesan chucked right into the blender. Crafty! But as any home-dressing knockabout knows, a true, homemade dressing will eventually separate into its component parts again. So these "artisans" put in a little to xanthan gum to keep it all thick and spoogy. Xanthan gum!

I would like to see the artisan vinaigrette makers in a cage match with the artisan lettuce folk. Naturally, they would fight to the death while we all chanted, "Two men enter, one man leaves!" When it was all over, the loser would have a shitty salad placed on his grave.

If the match was valiantly fought, we might even throw in a few artisan croutons.