The Grove Guy: GOING MAD WITH MISO

Francesca and I make our own salad dressings.  I gave a bottle of my "miso" to friends in Georgia last week and today, they asked me for the

recipe. 

 I don't have one. I make it up each batch based on my feeble memory and momentary instincts.  I tried putting it on paper and here is what I came up with:

 

-Start with a third of a pint (about 5 oz.) of miso paste

in your blender (Whole Foods has it)

-Add 1/4 water to that, then toss in

-a cup of oil (olive, safflower, whatever).

-1/4-1/2 of a med. onion

-Fresh ginger, the size of a peach pit.

-2 cloves of crushed garlic (or more! Garlic is as

good as ten mothers)

-a peeled and seeded lemon (or lime)

-tea spoon of fish sauce and a

 -tea spoon of honey (more if you've a sweet tooth!)

-Now pour in 1/3 cup vinegar

-tspn of mustard (takes too long to include vowels sometimes)

   Once in a while I will add a dash of Tabasco sauce just

for the hell of it.

Turn on the blender for 20-30 seconds.

If there are herbs growing in the front yard I will throw in

some leaves of cilantro, parsley, chives, and  Jamaican hibiscus

at this point. I run the blender then just one or two seconds

for these so I can see the herb bits suspended in the liquid.

Give it a taste.

If it seems to lack something, add that.

Again, it's a guessing game writing "my recipe".  Maybe the oil part is 1 1/2 cups.

It fills up 2/3 of our Waring blender and two salad dressing

bottles.

Have fun with it.  It's hard to go wrong. Whatever you make will be twice as good as the store bought stuff.

Glennito