Mouth-spankingly good salad dressing

Sometimes I find myself with a giant pile of salad greens and very little inspiration. Like, I know I'm supposed to eat these greens - and furthermore I WANT to eat them - but then I get bored.

I mean, I could always just give them the old olive oil and vinegar treatment, but that gets old when you've been having salads with dinner every single night because your winter greens are exploding and so - I must dress it up. 

Thankfully we live in Northern California where winter also means citrus and we also spent a good amount of time in the summer and fall making pesto from all of the garden's basil, so a mouth-spankingly good salad dressing is only a whisk away.

That's right - a whisk away. I just made that up. I guess I'm getting cheeky around the holidays. Forgive me.

Make this dressing and then enjoy your mouth spanking.

Pesto Lemon Dressing

Ingredients
Juice from 1 Meyer lemon
1 T homemade pesto (or storebought - we don't judge)
3 T olive oil
1 T kosher salt
1 T fresh ground pepper
2 big handfuls arugula or whatever greens you have in the garden

To make
In a large bowl, whisk lemon juice, pesto, salt and pepper. When thoroughly blended, add olive oil one tablespoon at a time until completely blended.

Then toss in TO THE VERY SAME BOWL a couple big handfuls of freshly picked arugula or whatever greens you have on hand (mustard, fava leaves, spinach, beet greens, kale...) right from your garden and toss to coat.

We had a few tomatoes still sitting on the counter, so those went in, too.

That's it. Now go eat those greens.

The Best Sauce Ever. Yep.

I know it sounds like big talk - just having one tomato sauce recipe for every purpose, but I tell you, it's just that good. In fact, it's known in my house as The Best Sauce Ever. Yep. and I believe that it is. 

I've used this sauce to toss with pasta, gnocchi, in lasagna, in eggplant Parmesan, over ravioli, mixed with chopped greens like chard and kale, simmered with some meatballs and - I won't lie to you - I've even just eaten it with a spoon.

For the past five years I have loved no other tomato sauce and life has been great.

I dare you to make this sauce with your homegrown tomatoes and then try to tell me it's not the tastiest tomato sauce you've ever eaten. 

I DOUBLE DARE YOU.

The Best Sauce Ever. Yep.

Ingredients:
4-5 large ripe fresh garden tomatoes, sliced into 1" rounds
4 good sized fresh basil leaves
1 head of garlic, top chopped off
1/3 cup red wine (I usually use a Cabernet)
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

To make:
Preheat oven to 450.

Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil and then coat the foil with some olive oil. 

Place the prepped garlic head on another piece of foil and drizzle some oil on the top cut end of the garlic and add a bit of salt. Wrap the foil around it into a nice package. Put it in the middle of the baking sheet.

Place your tomato rounds in a single layer on the baking sheet around the garlic. Drizzle all the tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Roast it all into the oven for 30 minutes.

That blackness is what you want to see when you take the tomatoes out of the oven.

Pull out the food processor and add all the tomatoes (they'll be a bit charred and maybe a little grabby when trying to peel them from the foil - try hard). Unwrap the garlic and squeeze in the cloves (they'll be like paste - it's cool). Add the wine, basil and salt/pepper as you like it.

Puree the whole mess until it's one even consistency and no giant basil bits are jamming around in there.

Like I said before, you can toss it with some pasta, stew it with some meatballs, add a bit of cream and serve over gnocchi - seriously, whatever. Or just eat it out of the Cuisinart with your spoon because it's so good you won't care that you just ate sauce for dinner while standing in the kitchen.