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Harvest Salad with Pumpkin Oil Vinaigrette


For the Pair of Pumpkins baby shower, I was trying to come up with a way to incorporate pumpkins into the salad. Then I figured it out: make the salad dressing with pumpkin oil and top the whole thing with pumpkin seeds!

Salad = artisanal greens, sliced persimmons, pomegranate seeds, capers, pumpkin seeds

Dressing = pumpkin oil, fig balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped herbs (I used mint, cilantro, and parsley), freshly ground sea salt and pepper

Pumpkin oil is a rich, deep green oil. It's heavy, though, so I used it as a flavoring and topped the dressing off with a Persian lime olive oil.

If you know nothing else about vinaigrettes, remember this: the magic ratio of oil to vinegar is 3 to 1. As long as you know that, you won't need to consult a vinaigrette recipe ever again. Just remember three parts oil to one part vinegar and you'll be all right. If you get them backwards and do three parts vinegar to one part oil, your puckered mouth will ensure you don't make that mistake a second time!  So, I did 1 part pumpkin oil, 2 parts olive oil, 1 part fig balsamic vinegar.  I put that all into a mason jar and shook, shook, shook, and shook some more to make a temporary emulsion.

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