…if what they want is GOOD food.

After a weekend of less-than-healthy eating — the Super Bowl has that effect — I figured it was high-time to post one of my all-time favorite salad dressings.  In fact, this dressing is so special that I decided to give it its own post (tune in tomorrow for the perfect salad).  While Italian, ranch and blue cheese might hold the throne as America’s favorite salad dressings, I’d like to introduce you to what you’ve been missing out on — poppy seed dressing.  I know, I know.  Poppy seeds? While you might be wondering how poppy seeds could still be relevant, especially in a salad dressing, consider the words of Kay Rentschler from her New York Times article on this misunderstood spice, “Ultimately, it is as a finely granular, dusky backdrop that poppy seeds make their point best, a point well articulated in the presence of lemon or orange peel, the smoke of sweet spices or the fragrant notes of honey or orange flower oil.”  Sounds like they might find a nice home in a unique sweet and sour salad dressing, doesn’t it?

Romanticism aside, I’ve eaten this dressing since I was a boy, on salads as varied as tender red leaf lettuce with grapefruit segments and blue cheese to sturdy spinach leaves with strawberries and feta — you really can’t go wrong.  In fact, the beauty of this dressing is its ability to compliment ripe fruit regardless of season.  Wintertime salad? Use crisp apples or tangy orange segments for a refreshing contrast to this dressing’s sweet notes.  Have pears from the farmers market lying around?  Toss them in as a sweet foil to the same tangy dressing.

As tasty as it is beautiful, this one-of-a-kind dressing is worth making for the work week when you’re in the need of something light and refreshing. Whip up a batch in the blender, throw it in your fridge and eat like a king for the week.

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Nooks and crannies.  These three words became my mantra as I set out to bake one of my all-time favorite breakfast staples from scratch.  Afterall, it’s an English muffin’s series of nooks and crannies that really sets it apart from the other breads in the breakfast lineup.  If I was going to replicate anything close to my childhood favorite Thomas’, I was going to have to ensure the development of enough peaks and valleys to adequately support my preferred topping of butter and a little of  my mom’s homemade strawberry jam.

You might be wondering why anyone would set out to make their own English muffins at home when there are perfectly fine specimens available at the supermarket.  To be completely honest, I don’t have a very good answer to that question.  You see, my sister just gave me a copy of the new Momofuku cookbook for my birthday, and while all the recipes looks fantastic, it was the recipe and photo for their signature English muffins that first popped out at me.  As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, I by no means consider myself an expert baker, but it has been in the production of this blog that I’ve developed a renewed sense of adventure in the kitchen.  These days I’m eager to go outside of my comfort zone and share my experiences in the cooking of recipes that I might have shied away from in the past.

It took a couple of days, but the oftentimes finicky process was well worth the effort in the end.  After clumsily navigating the pitfalls involved in working with an extremely delicate dough and the laborious task of religiously flipping the puffy, implant-like balloons of dough as they slowly baked on the cast iron griddle, I found that I was left with a new appreciation for the very makeup of these humble muffins.

So, are they worth making at home?  I’d say yes, if only for the personal satisfaction of watching a pad of butter slowly melt and ooze into all those nooks and crannies of your own creation.

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