Apple Salad for Sunday Dinners

Author Notes

I could look you right in the face and not remember your name but I can tell you about a dinner I ate or made years ago. I come by the name forgetting honestly from my dad. He can remember numbers and spreadsheets from years past like I remember food. Sometimes though a few gems slip through the cracks. Fortunately things come along that will remind you of a recipe from your past. I remember the first time I saw a chef make a vinaigrette at culinary school and how they emulsified it with a little water in a blender. I made dressings like this for a long time. Eventually I moved on to other styles of dressings and somehow never came back to this way of making them. This year at Christmas I received the Frankie's Spuntino Kitchen cook book from my wife. Great wife, I know, and I am easily the luckiest man in the world. It also shows me how in many ways food52 is a great resource and not just an amazing learning tool. This book would have never passed through my radar without food52 and the piglet contest. In the book they make their dressings the same way and it jarred my memory to days gone by. I created this salad and ate it this morning for breakfast. You laugh but you need to get the light while the light is good when you want to photograph something. I am making it again for Sunday dinner. The Sunday dinner tradition is something we have always done and this fits right in with the whole food theme, roast chicken, lots of veggie sides, and great home made bread that we tend to stick with on Sundays. This will go into the rotation and I doubt this method will slip away again. - thirschfeld —thirschfeld

Test Kitchen Notes

Thirschfeld takes care to compose a salad that is both beautiful and flavorful. The sweet and nutty vinaigrette takes seconds to blend together in a blender. The simple salad is packed with crunchy apples, carrots, cabbage and celery. Shallot and scallion garnishes give it a little sharpness. Try it at your next Sunday supper. —Stephanie Bourgeois