beautiful balsamic dressing

Wednesday night has recently been established in the Mullin household as "date night." Tonight, however, it is raining, I am getting over a cold, and my husband is stuck in traffic on his way back from Burbank. So instead, we will be having leftover soup (not home-made, I'm sorry to say) and a quickly-thrown-together green salad. I decided to make at least a smidgen of effort, and turned to Jamie Oliver for some salad dressing inspiration. Here is what Jamie and I came up with.

Does it count as a recipe? I'll let you decide. This is the kind of dressing that will keep you from ever wandering down the bottled salad dressing aisle again.


Beautiful Balsamic Dressing
serves 2 people for a dinner salad, or 4 for side salads

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons of good quality balsamic vinegar
5 tablespoons EVOO
4-5 basil leaves, chopped
handful of pine nuts, toasted and then chopped
salt
pepper

DIRECTIONS:

Whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl.

That's it! Bottled dressings be damned. I would also vote that this would be excellent drizzled over fresh mozzarella, as a dip for fresh crusty bread, or even as a marinade for steak (or tofu for our vegetarian friends). Yum!