On long drives, whenever we want to take a break from discussing matters of a more personal nature, my brother and I t/files/storyimages/to revisit certain conversational themes. Most of our topics are introduced with the phrase Why don’t they . . . ? or, alternately, Why do they . . .? Why don’t they, the terrorists, take out the nation’s electrical grid? Why don’t they stop putting high fructose corn syrup in dill pickles? Why don’t they make arugula ice cream? Why do people pick their noses in cars, where they have even higher chances of being observed? Why do people think Carlos Mencia is funny? Who cares about the Mind of Mencia? What mind? Etc.
During our most recent drive, my brother asked me, “Why don’t they make green tea salad dressing?”
“What?” I practically shouted.
“Green tea salad dressing,” he repeated slowly, as if talking to an elderly, dementia-ridden person. “The people cannot get enough of green tea. It’s the new bran muffin. The ultimate antioxidant. The cure for all that ails
Why this guy is not in marketing I will never know. He’s a regular trend-spotter. For instance, he was the first person to mention to me that newspapers were going to go the way of the typewriter, the first to compreh/files/storyimages/that the dot.com bubble was going to deflate, the first to realize that midriff-baring jeans were here to stay. He always knows this stuff, and he hardly ever even leaves the house (which may be why he knows it).
My initial reaction used to be, “No way. That is so wrong.” But my brother is just never wrong. He knows the big stuff. Market forces. Tipping points. He was, by the way, also the first person I ever heard utter the phrase “global warming”— long before I knew who Al Gore was.
But anyway, back to the tea in the salad dressing. The bro asked (no doubt trying to make me feel as if I had something to contribute to the conversation), “So how would you do it? Would you use green tea powder? Along with a little garlic powder? Some vinegar and oil?”
“No way!” Ha. See? I still got to say, “No way,” and for once I knew I was right. He was talking to the woman who drinks several cups per day of what P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster habitually referred to as “the strengthening brew,” and the strengthening brew is not made with any powder. It’s not even made with a bag. It is, of course, made with loose tea leaves. Thus, I told my brother, you would have to operate using the same principle as when you make espresso frosting for a cake — that is to say, you would first start with an extra-strong brewing of tea and use it sparingly, along with the usual ingredients one finds in a vinaigrette.
To which he replied, “No way!”
To which I replied, “I’ll show you, mister.”
Back in my kitchen I experimented. But almost everything I came up with tasted too watery — or like something you’d drink in an Asian restaurant, perhaps mixed with sake, or poured over a bowl of sweet and sour noodles. I checked all of my cookbooks. Nada. I dashed off to the Internet. And just when I was about to conclude nada there as well, I found this really unusual-sounding recipe at a Canadian website called torontotaste.ca, where I learned that citrus juices are particularly good “flavor carriers” for tea. OK, I thought. I suppose that makes sense. I mean, lemon enhances the flavor of tea, right?
Yet what made this salad dressing sound intriguing was that it called not for green tea but for Earl Grey tea, actually steeped directly in hot orange juice. I had only recently learned that the key ingredient lending Earl Grey its distinctive flavor is oil of bergamot (a citrus cross between a lemon and a Seville orange), the very thing my favorite bath oil is made of! Earl Grey is traditionally produced from black tea leaves, not green, which gives it an aromatic scent and a stronger flavor that can hold its own as a salad dressing ingredient. So much for the green tea sales pitch. I broke the news to my brother. He said that was OK; black tea has its own healing properties.
I jazzed up the
Oh, and by the way, there are swank restaurants that do indeed serve arugula ice cream, along with basil ice cream, garlic ice cream, nasturtium ice cream and, ahem (for those no longer allowed to smoke in restaurants), tobacco ice cream. I am not making this up.
Orange Earl Grey Salad Dressing
1/2 cup of orange juice, strained through a fine strainer
1 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of white pepper
1 tablespoon of Earl Grey tea leaves
1 teaspoon of
1 small clove of garlic, minced
? cup of olive oil
? cup of rice wine vinegar
Bring the orange juice, sugar, salt and pepper to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove from the heat and add the Earl Grey leaves. Let them steep for five minutes; then strain and discard the leaves. Let the liquid cool.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the mustard, garlic and olive oil. Add the vinegar and cooled orange-tea mixture. Toss with the fruit and mixed greens.
If you are not using all of the salad dressing in one day, keep it in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to a week.
