A few days ago, a wonderful friend of ours commented that she had found Green Goddess salad dressing at her little corner grocer in her even smaller small town.  For those of us with access to mega-supermarkets and specialty food stores, galore, finding a bottle of salad dressing probably wouldn’t make the list of exciting things that happened, today.  But I remember being up at the north shore of Tahoe back in the ’70s and being held hostage to what the local Safeway had to offer.  We actually did our big shopping down in Reno because the pickin’s were so slim.  And Reno was no gourmet metropolis.

Now…  we all know that the odds of me buying a bottle of salad dressing today are between slim and none.  But that Green Goddess kept calling to me.  I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I had Green Goddess dressing.  It may have been out of a bottle in Tahoe.

I had to make some.

It’s a really basic, simple dressing – mayonnaise based – that anyone can whip up in a minute or two.  And I have to tell ya.  This one just rocked.

I took a couple of liberties with the recipe – how unusual – but I didn’t have tarragon vinegar or chives.  I used white wine vinegar and a whole green onion with all the green top.  And dried tarragon.

We get anchovy paste in a  tube and keep it in the ‘fridge for those few times when I need one or two anchovies.  But canned anchovies in oil will keep indefinitely in a little tupperware container.

Here ya go:

Green Goddess Dressing

  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 anchovy fillets
  • 1/2 green onion
  • 1 tsp parsley
  • 1 tsp chives
  • 1-1/2 tsp tarragon vinegar
  • 1/2 tsp fresh tarragon

Place everything in the bowl of a small food processor or blender.  Mix well.

This would also work great as a dip!

Yum.

I put it on iceberg lettuce salads with grilled chicken breasts.  I marinated the chicken in a bit of olive oil and herbs d’ Provence since I was using the tarragon in the dressing.

Oh…  and for all of you who eschew iceberg lettuce because it’s so common and low on the nutrition scale but buy romaine hearts, butter lettuce, greenleaf, etc?!?  Guess what?!?  None of those have any nutritional value, either.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

And then I baked the last loaf of bread from the most recent batch of no-knead dough.  I do not know what was up with this batch, but it was the wettest dough I have ever made.    I even added an extra cup of flour to no avail.  It was just l-o-o-s-e.

This loaf glued itself to the peel and refused to come off.  Half-in and half-out of the oven, I just scraped it off with my hands and piled it on top of itself.

It came out tasting great!