03-07-2025
Don't Bet Against the House Salad Dressing
Anyone who hosts regularly knows the power, the necessity, of a house specialty. Many of my friends traffic in the house dessert or drink: At one apartment, you can expect to end a meal with a platter of cherries or other ruby fruit, shards of dark chocolate and little disks of shortbread or other cookie. At another, you'll be greeted by some elusive specialty amaro and soda.
At my own, there is a house salad. I love to serve a pile of sliced Persian cucumbers and celery tangled in arugula, dressed in a mixture of mashed avocado, sesame oil and lime juice. Sometimes I add thinly sliced snap peas! Other times there are scallions. Many more times, there is cilantro. Catch me adding the occasional splash of ponzu.
(I can take no credit for it: It's one of my colleague Becky Hughes's house salads, on perpetual loan to me.)
Samin Nosrat, too, knows how one person's house specialty can quickly become your own. Her house dressing is actually that of Via Carota, the beloved Italian restaurant in the West Village. 'Since I first wrote about this recipe,' she writes, 'it's become indispensable not only for me but also for my entire Culinary Brain Trust, who now simply call it House Dressing.'
Think of today's newsletter, then, as your own Culinary Brain Trust, a sauce library from which to borrow your next house dressing. Samin has a few more suggestions for you. Her creamy lemon-miso dressing — perhaps her new favorite all-purpose dressing, she writes in the recipe — is inspired by another restaurant, Kismet Rotisserie in Los Angeles. It checks all the boxes: creamy, tangy, sweet, savory, good on salad, good on everything else, especially roasted broccoli.
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