Winter salads are often more bitter or hardy than their summer counterparts.  We lack the natural sweetness of berries, a lot of sweet fruit, tomatoes, light greens and other bright summer flavors.  We’re left with dense offerings such as carrots, onions, kale, mache, and other bitter greens.  This is a simple technique that combines vinegar, sugar and fruit preserves to create a sweet-and-sour dressing that is also fat-free (though I’m a proponent of fat).  We used part of a jar of preserves that were recently given to us to make the quince jelly gastrique.

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Over the last few years we’ve found that a key to enjoying our pantry is to find diverse ways to use the flavors it provides.  We’ve used jam to glaze meats, make cocktails, sweeten smoothies and played with various salad dressing recipes (including a very standard strawberry jam vinaigrette).

We used strawberry jam for this recipe but any jam could be used in its place as the other ingredients are fairly neutral.

Last nights winder salad incorporates tahini to emulsify it.  Emulsifying simply means to incorporate the oil and vinegar into one sauce as opposed to a separated dressing.  Here is a picture of our salad (it used plenty of winter ingredients yet brought the flavours of summer into our dreary winter evening):

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Over the last few years, many farmers in the Toronto area have learned to extend summer and fall crops into the fall through planting different crops, cold frames, natural greenhouses, different storage techniques, trenches dug under the frost line and more.

We’re still finding arugula, carrots, and tomatoes (they’ve been ripened in storage).  Looking for a bigger taste of summer, we made a great dressing with strawberry jam tonight.

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