"Did you just put cream cheese in the salad dressing?"

Or, how to make do when the Airbnb is out of oil

First, HELLO to all 2,162 of my closest friends! That’s right—in the five days since I launched Gentle Foods, more than two thousand of you have signed up to read. I can’t express how meaningful it is to me that you’ve chosen to be here, and I am so excited to bring more essays and recipes your way. I’ve been in a state of creative burnout for many months now, and this is the first time in awhile that I feel truly invigorated and joyful in my work. And that’s thanks to all of you.

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I’m fresh off a weekend spent high in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, NC, for my sister’s bachelorette party. (I’m also recovering from food poisoning that I acquired sometime during said bachelorette, though I’ll spare you all the details here.) I love the Asheville mountains so much. In between trips to town for delicious food and drink and some exploring, we had plenty of down time in the mountains, where we spotted bears, huge wild turkeys, and groundhogs.

On our last night, a friend and I were tasked with cooking dinner for the house of 12. We were all stuffed and sleepy from a day of eating (at Cúrate) and drinking (at Wicked Weed Funkatorium) so we kept it simple with a veg pasta, a meat sauce pasta, and a big salad.

I diligently plugged away on salad duty, layering baby arugula, sliced strawberries and cucumbers, corn, avocado, halved cherry tomatoes, and basil into a slow cooker insert (the only vessel in the house large enough to hold a salad for 12 and a genius move on my part, if I might say). Over it all went a whole 8-oz. block of feta. I was just about to start gathering ingredients for a sharp-and-lightly-sweet vinaigrette when my co-cook informed me we were “running low on oil” and handed me a bottle that held about a teaspoon of it, lol.

As someone who dreads a naked salad (WHY), I started rooting around the fridge and pantry for something, anything, to add some verve to those dry leaves. And by verve, I mean fat. I spotted a carton of half and half that we had bought for morning coffee and was immediately reminded of one of my favorite unorthodox salads, the Little Gems with Lemon Cream, Spring Onion, Radish, and Mint from Six Seasons by Josh McFadden. The Lemon Cream is what makes that salad special—you steep some raw garlic cloves in heavy cream for a couple of hours, then whisk the garlicky cream until airy and season with lemon zest and juice, a little olive oil, and salt and pepper. McFadden describes it as “a light, almost feminine dressing” which, I don’t know what it means for a dressing to be “feminine" but I do know it absolutely slaps on crisp young lettuces, sugar snap peas, asparagus, etc. At this point, we all know that fat = flavor, and that is, of course, why McFadden’s salad is so tasty—the sweet and rich dairy fat from the cream cranks the flavor of the vegetables to 11.

Finding myself without heavy cream, fresh garlic, or olive oil, I had to do a little creative Frankensteining for my own dressing. I whisked some half and half with a big spoonful of cream cheese (from our morning bagels) and a couple handfuls of the crumbled feta in a bowl to combine; the cream cheese added both body and a pleasant, almost ranch-y tang. To season, I added the juice of a lemon, some garlic powder, salt and pepper, a bloop of agave nectar, that teaspoon of oil, and both apple cider and white wine vinegars, because why not.

And while the dressed salad was perfectly tasty, I had a final stroke of inspo and added a few generous spoonfuls of spicy corn relish that we had for dipping chips. The sweet, spicy, acidic relish did for the whole salad what neon green relish does for a hot dog. In other words, it fucking rocked.

Here is a terrible picture I took:

As I’m thinking about it now, I definitely could have macerated the strawberries in some agave nectar (I don’t think there was granulated sugar at the house) to make them nice and juicy and then stirred in some balsamic vinegar—basically a shrub lol—and used that as an oil-free dressing, which while not ideal would still have been nice. (And if strawberry vinaigrette appeals, I highly recommend Elena Besser’s Strawberry Salad With Black Pepper-Feta Croutons.)

The moral here is that, whether you’re in an Airbnb with glass cutting boards or in your own kitchen, you probably have WAY more ingredients for a stellar salad dressing than you might be aware of. So god forbid the next time you find yourself out of oil, or just in the mood to try something different, consider using any of the following fats to build an alt dressing:

• Heavy cream or half and half (I would avoid milk, as the resulting dressing would be too thin)

• Buttermilk

• Sour cream or crème fraîche or cream cheese or Boursin

• Yogurt (Greek or regular, as long as it’s plain)

• Peanut butter or another nut butter (creamy or crunchy, it’s all good!)

• Tahini or another sesame paste

• Avocado (for green goddess vibes)

• Mayo

• Pesto

• Rendered bacon fat (if you cook bacon for breakfast, save the drippings and rewarm/melt later to make a warm bacon vinaigrette—especially delicious with bitter greens like arugula or frisée)

I would love to know the wildest pinch-hitter ingredient you’ve used in a salad dressing, please!!! The comments, that’s what they’re there for.

PSA: Speaking of yogurt dressing, later this week I’m dropping a recipe for a potato salad with yogurt dressing that stops my tastebuds in their tracks every time, it’s SO GOOD. Look for that on Thursday, which will be my regular recipe drop day.

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Love,
Chaey