Lennie's Tarragon Orange Salad

Lennie's Note:

This lovely salad has a distinctive flavour due to the tarragon, which also adds a touch of sweetness along with the sugar and the oranges. It looks terrific in the bowl and tastes even better. This salad is based on one served at the Magic Pan restaurants here in Toronto back in the 1970s; the recipe was published in the local paper ages ago and I modified it a bit to more suit my tastes. The Magic Pan is now gone but its memory lives on with this delicious salad!

• Total Time: 25 mins
• Prep Time: 25 mins
• Cook Time: 0 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

Dressing

• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 dash Tabasco sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon dijon-style mustard
• 1 teaspoon dried tarragon
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 dash black pepper
• 2/3 cup tarragon vinegar
• 3/4 cup canola oil
• 3/4 cup olive oil

Salad

• 1 head romaine lettuce, washed and dried
• 2 green onions, sliced
• 1/4 cup almonds, slivered or flaked, toasted
• 1 (11 ounce) can mandarin oranges in juice, drained

Directions:

1. First, make salad dressing; you can do this in advance.
2. Combine sugar, tarragon, tabasco, pepper, egg yolks and mustard in food processor.
3. With machine running, gradually add vinegar.
4. Then, with machine still running, add oils in a thin stream.
5. Process until well blended and creamy; taste and add salt if desired.
6. Keep refrigerated.
7. Should be enough dressing to make two or three salads; remember this when looking at nutritional analysis of this recipe.
8. To make salad, tear cleaned romaine into bite sized pieces; place in large salad bowl along with sliced green onions.
9. Toast almonds (I prefer flaked) and set aside until cool.
10. Drain oranges well and place half in with lettuce and onions.
11. Toss well with dressing (about 1/3 of the Salad Dressing recipe, or to your taste).
12. Sprinkle top of salad with remaining oranges and the toasted almonds; serve.
13. Leftover dressing keeps well in the fridge for about a week.

Reviews

[HeatherFeather]

What a delicious salad - and the dressing is the very best part. Unique, rich, and creamy, this dressing is so tasty that I wanted to lick the bowl clean. I did have a concern about the raw eggs in the dressing, and after consulting with the recipe poster, I tried using pastuerized egg substitutes. They worked out very well and produced a thick, rich, creamy dressing. Excellent!

[SuzieQue]

We absolutely loved this. I made the whole recipe anticipating leftovers for the next day, but we ate it all! The tartness along with the creamy dressing is just a great combination. I browned the almonds in a little butter and then drained them on a paper towel before adding to salad. Great crunch factor! Thanks Lennie for an awesome salad.

[jbglass1]

This disaster was a failure for me. I made the salad dressing ahead of time, and stored it in the fridge for 2 days. Then made the salad the morning of, exactly as the recipe recommended, but had to store it in my fridge for 4 hours before the dinner event I was bringing it to. By the time I arrived at the party, the salad was a soupy mess. The dressing tasted fattening, vinegary and oily. Thumbs down. I won't make this again.