Ranch, from Scratch, and Worth It

Mon, 12 May 2025 08:15:00 +0000

Ranch has an image problem in Britain that it does not deserve. To most people here it means a claggy beige sauce that arrives, uninvited, next to a plate of chicken wings, tasting mainly of dried herbs and preservative. That version is a travesty of the real thing. Actual ranch, made with cultured buttermilk and a fistful of fresh herbs, is one of the great creamy dressings — cool, tangy, herby and savoury, light enough to pour and rich enough to cling. It is worth making from scratch precisely because the gap between the homemade and the bottled is enormous, wider than for almost any other sauce I can think of.

Green Goddess Dressing with Herbs and Anchovy

Sun, 11 May 2025 11:15:00 +0000

Green goddess is a dressing with a founding myth attached, which is rare for something you keep in a jam jar in the fridge door. The usual story places it at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the early 1920s, whipped up by the chef in honour of the actor George Arliss, who was in town starring in a play called The Green Goddess. Whether that tale is exact or polished by a century of retelling, the dressing itself is real and it is very good: a thick, pourable, aggressively herby emulsion, pale jade in colour, with a quiet savoury hum underneath that most people cannot name. That hum is anchovy, and it is the whole point.

Dressing - vo.rs

Ranch, from Scratch, and Worth It

Green Goddess Dressing with Herbs and Anchovy