Spicy Salad Dressing

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1.5 c. Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c. Wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ground pepper
2 tbsp Tomato paste
2 tbsp Chinese garlic chili sauce
1/2 c. Parmesan or Romano cheese
1/2 tsp Oregano, dried
1 Sweet pepper, sliced
1/2 Onion, medium size, sliced


Put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor. Puree to desired consistency.

Salad dressing can be stored in the fridge for up to 1 month.

Serve with your favourite salad. (This dressing has a thicker consistency when it's cold. If you want it to be more liquidy, warm the dressing up to room temperature before serving.)


My comments:

This is my favourite salad dressing. It's healthy because there are no preservative. It's tastey because it uses all fresh ingredients. You can adjust the amount of spices to your own taste and it keeps very well in the fridge. I shared this recipe with a few of my friends and they all love it.


The original recipe on Epicurious called for green peppers but I found the dressing tastes better with a sweet pepper. I've tried the red, orange and yellow peppers and each type of pepper gives the dressing just a slightly different tastes. Sometimes depending on what's on sale, I'll even mix and match the sweet peppers.

I love the Chinese garlic chili sauce whether I'm cooking Chinese, Indian, Thai or even Italian. You can buy it in Chinatown and maybe even a large franchised grocery store (eg. Loblaw). If you don't have Chinese garlic chili sauce, you can use 1 clove of garlic, minced, plus desired amount of hot sauce. Alternatively, you can omit the hot sauce completely if you don't like spicy food.

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