Vinaigrettes and Other Dressings


Photography by Kimberley Hasselbrink
Published by Harvard Common Press; 6.1.2013 edition

192 pages

Vinaigrettes and Other Dressings 60 Sensational recipes to Liven Up Greens, Grains, Slaws, and Every Kind of Salad

To sell her readers on vinaigrettes and dressings, Michele Jordan must first sell salad, and she does so with a poet’s flair: “From a few leaves of just-picked lettuces damp with an evening’s rain and a creamy frenzy of earthy potatoes napped in a velvety mayonnaise to a cool mound of silky rice noodles in a tart and fierty dressing, salads . . . keep us healthy, happy, and alive.”

Heather Weber


During my many years in the kitchen, sauces were the foundation of many dishes. In our modern cuisine, dressings have replaced sauces. In Vinaigrettes and Other Dressings, Michele Anna Jordan shows how to use dressings to great advantage to season, moisten, accent, highlight, and harmonize dishes from salads to first courses to main dishes–with delicious results.

Jacques Pépin


Vinaigrettes and Other Dressings, my sixteenth book, is more than a collection of recipes. The opening sections offers advice that applies to our entire lives in the kitchen and in the marketplace, as how we procure our ingredients is every bit as important and perhaps more so than what we do with them. And although it is not reflected in the title, there is a full chapter of salad recipes, recipes that I think of as templates with variations inspired by the seasons and personal taste. For example, traditional Caprese Salad includes sliced mozzarella fresca, sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil and, maybe, a little vinegar, depending on who is making it. It is wonderful when tomatoes are in season locally. When they are not, why settle for tasteless tomatoes? The book has recipes for similar salads for winter, spring, and late fall, after the first frost. In springtime, I make a Caprese-style salad with fresh lava beans, thinly sliced French breakfast radishes, sliced spring onions, spearmint, and chives. I approach all salads this way.

Selected Recipes

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