Magic Viniagrette

 

This is an all purpose vinaigrette that I’ve used in many diverse dishes with such positive results that I called it “Magic Vinaigrette”. 

Besides normal use on vegetables and salads it can be a gentle addition to a piece of plainly cooked seafood. It’s excellent as a marinade. And…..it’s magic! 

Here’s the magic potion: 

-  It uses 50/50 olive oil and canola oil, which dilutes the olive oil to a more subtle flavor.

-  Then it uses a 50/50 mix of white wine vinegar and sherry vinegar. High quality sherry vinegar is divine, but can be quite strong on its own. So again, subtlety is added by blending with the ww vinegar.

-  The proportions are 4 parts oils to 1 part vinegars. It gets finished with an optional squeeze of lemon juice and S&P. 

The ingredient selections are critical: 

-  A robust, high quality extra virgin olive oil is needed

-  Use high quality Sherry vinegar from Spain. Mass-produced sherry vinegars from the grocery store are not really a good substitute, as they tend to have just the slightest flavor of sherry and are often harsh. 

-  Rather an ordinary white wine vinegar, I use rice wine vinegar from China. Pearl River Bridge products (including their great soy sauces) are beginning to show up in large US supermarkets over the past year or two. 

The two vinegars themselves and the 50/50 split of the oils and vinegars are the magic. 

Magic Vinaigrette

 

 

	Small	Regular	Large
Extra Virgin Olive oil	1/4 C	1/2 C	1 C
Canola oil	1/4 C	1/2 C	1 C
Spanish Sherry vinegar	1 T	2 T	1/4 C
Rice Wine vinegar	1 T	2 T	1/4 C
Lemon, juiced (optional)	1/2	1	2

 

• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Combine in a jar and shake well
• Keeps 4 weeks or longer

Two Skewers for Grilled Swordfish

Mark Bittman published a little e-book called "What I Grill and Why". It's only available on Kindle, but if you have a Kindle it's worth far more than the 99 cents it's selling for at the moment.

The best thing I discovered in it was his technique for using two skewers to better grill chunks of fish. A single skewer allows a line of fish pieces to individually stick to a grill grate, then spin around the skewer when trying to remove it. Two skewers allows for a more unified solid 'rack' of fish pieces, which can better be released from the grill.

AWESOME idea. It will work for most firm-fleshed fish.

Bittman provides a recipe that marinates swordfish chunks in lime juice, sesame oil, soy sauce, cilantro and Tabasco. I used a sprinkling of red pepper flakes instead of cilantro. With freshly caught swordfish from the gulf, it was wonderful.