Homegrown Salads Need Homemade Dressings

Just add Caesar. Here's a recipe worth memorizing.

I’m starting to learn that gardening, like parenting, is bursts of quick activity followed by periods of relative calm. Repeat. The planting, the thinning, the weeding, and the harvesting all happen in a flash. It’s the gardening equivalent of lunchtime, play time, and bath time: You need a plan, you need energy, and you’re going to be drowsy afterward. But the actual growing? That’s kind of like nap time — you can take a breath, kick up your feet, and take care of some things you’ve been neglecting while your garden rests peacefully. (Here’s Jagger pre-nap time:)

We’re in a bit of a nap-time phase right now. We’ve harvested two rows of radishes, the fastest-growing of our fall plantings. And now we’re waiting for everything else — the strike peas, the Chiogga beets, the babette carrots, the gai lan, the dill and the deer tongue lettuce — to mature in another few weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking care of some maintenance things around the plot. We installed a gate to our fence this week, so critters have another barrier between them and our scrumptious veggies. I weeded between every beet and carrot, hoping to improve their chances of success by removing the competition for root space and nutrients. And I raked the paths that run between our rows of vegetables, trying to mitigate the soil compacting done when I stomp through those spaces.

And Jagger and I are plucking off leaves and shoots and sprouts to make quick salads. We made a big, all-homegrown salad this week with tender gai lan and deer tongue lettuce leaves, sliced breakfast radishes, and pea tendrils and flowers. I topped it with a homemade Caesar dressing that we love because it’s so creamy and comes together so quickly. Here’s a recipe for the dressing, which goes well on just about any salad you can throw in a bowl (no gai lan required).

Recipe: The Best Caesar Dressing

The trick here is to add the oil slowly, a little at a time, while whisking so the dressing gets creamy. This is an anchovy-free dressing, but you can easily add an anchovy filet to the bowl in step 1 for an extra punch to your Caesar. We paired this with a local merlot from Penns Wooods Winery in Chadds Ford, Pa., and the two sang together. Do you hear them?

The Best Caesar Dressing

Makes 3/4 cup

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons Dijon or stone-ground mustard

1 tablespoon parmesan or pecorino romano, grated

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons cracked black pepper

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1. Put the egg yolk, mustard, cheese, lemon juice, and pepper in a small mixing bowl.

2. Add the olive oil in a slow stream, whisking rapidly, until all the oil is incorporated and the dressing is creamy and emulsified.

3. Use as a salad dressing or vegetable dip.