Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
This week, I’m continuing my series on the “mother” sauces of California Cuisine. Since California Cuisine does not have an official list of foundational sauces, and I thought it should, I came up with the following sauces: mayonnaise, vinaigrette, salsa, Bernaise (or Hollandaise), pesto, soy sauce and basic tomato.
Having covered mayonnaise in posts a couple of weeks ago, last week, I took a dive into vinaigrettes, which I am continuing to cover this week.
Today, I’m featuring one of my all-time favorite citrus fruits, kumquats, in a dandy vinaigrette. I’m told that kumquats are an acquired taste, and perhaps that’s true. If you’ve never had them, kumquats are kind of an inside-out citrus fruit, with the skin being intensely sweet and the interior flesh being very sour. You can eat the whole thing–seeds and all. I prefer to remove the seeds because they can add more bitterness to the flavor than I like. Kumquats have a distinct flavor–sort of sweet, sour and a little bitter all wrapped up into one bite, and it occurred to me that they would make a very interesting vinaigrette. Not only was that true, it was so good, I made it two different ways!
For my first batch, I wanted to try a very creamy-textured vinaigrette and I whipped the whole thing up in my Vitamix. It came out a little thicker than I expected–and it was clear that it wouldn’t do for salad dressing–but it tasted great! Then it occurred to me that this creamy kumquat vinaigrette would be great as a sauce for vegetables and especially asparagus:
This creamy vinaigrette uses a little ginger in addition to the kumquats, which is optional, but adds a nice bit of bite to the flavors. I think it would also go nicely as a sauce with a tropical fish such as mahi-mahi or opah. I will be reporting on that pairing later in the week after I visit my fish guy.
The next version of kumquat vinaigrette I made was this more traditional vinaigrette:
For this version, I used my tiny Cuisinart to more roughly chop the kumquats, leaving some small, but recognizable chunks of the fruit in the mixture. This version is tart and little sweet, and just right for a salad of sturdier greens and other winter salad ingredients such as this luscious spinach, purple cabbage, cucumber, pecan and red bell pepper mixture:
For this version, I omitted the ginger. Even though the ingredients here–especially the spinach and the purple cabbage can stand up to a bolder salad dressing, I decided that the ginger would overpower the more delicate flavors of the cucumber and peppers. But–feel free to experiment and report back!
Tune in later in the week when I’ll be having more fun with vinaigrettes in my kitchen!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
