Monday, July 16, 2007

Is My Salad Burning?


Leftover Veggies with "Firemen's Salad Dressing"

This is a long weekend here in Japan with Monday being a national holiday. But for many of us, it was not a great one because of the typhoon, and for some people, big earthquake. I really hope that the earthquake this morning did not cause a terrible damage (esp. to the nuclear power plant there).

Anyway, for me, it’s a cloudy and eventless national holiday today. To cheer myself up, I tried out the salad dressing recipe that one of my readers had sent me a couple of weeks ago. Yep, he kindly emailed it to me in return for the onion dressing recipe. How nice! :D I loved this recipe, and he said it is OK to post it on my blog, so here it is. A nice salad dressing recipe from Hawaii.

Firemen's Salad Dressing
1 cup oil
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar or to taste, depends how sweet you like your dressing
2 bay leaves, uncrushed since it's hard to chew on
2 cloves of garlic, grated fine with Japanese grater
1 tsp. French's brand mustard (I never tried it with Dijon)
1 tsp. Worcheshire sauce
1/2 round white medium size onion grated fine with Japanese grater
8 Tbsp. mayonnaise
optional: garlic salt

(Recipe by the firemen of Hawaii)

Did you think, “Why firemen?” I did. Well, according to him, this is the recipe that his brother got from fellow fireman. Sounds like, in Hawaii, firemen (or some of them) take shifts to cook for the whole crew, so they are usually good cooks. He even said that there may be “firemen’s cookbook” out there, so I googled and got more than 50 hits. Mmmmm… I didn’t know this before. Live and learn, right?

He also mentioned about adding a little white miso to the dressing, and that’s what I tried today. I agree. It “added another dimension,” as he wrote. I think this addition made the dressing go well with “typically Japanese” ingredients. I’m going to try this with tofu salad tonight.

BTW, I googled about Japanese firemen and found this site. Yeah, they, too, seem to take shifts to cook, and they seem to make donburi pretty often. ;)


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9 comments:

K and S said...

Glad to hear you were alright from the typhoon. I'm worried about the nuclear plant too, they seemed to have a fire. This dressing sounds great and it is from Hawaii too, Wow! My friend works for the fire department in Hawaii, and yes, they take turns cooking. :)

Plume said...

I came here because I was woried about the earthquake, I'm glad to read that you are all right!

The salad looks good too ;-)

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

Nice fresh salad! I love the dressing...

I also thought about you when I heard about the earthquake! I'm glad you're ok...

Cheers,

Rosa

cookiecrumb said...

Take care, baby. Be well.

obachan said...

K & S
Thanks. The typhoon didn't affect Osaka very much, I guess?

I really wish to visit Hawaii someday. It must be a beautiful and friendly place.

Plume
Thank you. Yep, the place where the earthquake hit is very far, so I was not affected. But I don't feel all right when I see the disaster area on TV news.

Rosa
So the quake was on international news, I suppose. Thanks for your concern.

cookiecrumb
Thank you, dear. :)

Unknown said...

Yes, I did read the first 1/2 and ask why is it called Firemen's Salad Dressing. LOL! Ah, that makes sense. It is true, the Firemen live in the firehouse and have to cook for themselves.

obachan said...

Mmmm... for some reason, firemen in general started looking more attractive to me than before ... ;)

Anonymous said...

There are many fireman cookbooks in the USA.Those guys end up being gourmet level cooks in some instances .

obachan said...

Now I'm not surprised to hear that. And considering how they are used to heat and good at handling fire, there's no doubt that they make great cooks, I think. ;)