My work sorority has begun a lunch potluck in an effort to save money and eat healthy. My contribution was salad, so I went back to the primogenitor of great salads, my first great salad – The Veggie Delight at Cafe Intermezzo in Berkeley. In days of yore, I was able to get this giant salad with honey wheat bread for less than $6, a combination that took at least two days to eat, as long as the dressing was on the side. That dressing. Sweet, tangy, with a kick of onion, it was ambrosia on my earthy salad, it made the salad. In figuring out how to make the dressing, I realized that it is a typical poppy seed dressing, but it had become mythic in my mind.
My sentimentalism took a lot of time as the salad had a ton of ingredients – romaine lettuce, red cabbage, grated carrots, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, cucumber, avocado, hard boiled egg, alfalfa sprouts, croutons, sunflower seeds, and the poppy seed dressing. I made the croutons and dressing from scratch. The salad cost about $16 to make, feeding six girls and counting…
Poppy seed dressing
-combine in a blender, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, 1T grated onion, 1t salt, 1t dry mustard, puree
-add 1T poppy seeds
January 17, 2009 at 11:37 pm |
Are you sure about this recipe? I’ve been trying to reproduce that poppyseed dressing for a while and the ingredients you list don’t sound like what I get at Intermezzo. The picture you posted looks very different. Thanks for posting, looking forward to hearing back.
January 20, 2009 at 8:18 pm |
Hi Emil – I can’t verify for sure that this is Intermezzo’s recipe, but I find it to be very close, as do other Berkeley friends of mine who love it. Please give it a try and let me know. I have to confess that it’s been a few years since I’ve had the real thing, but at the time that I figured it out, it was comparable. In the photo, I realized that I had forgotten the egg and avocado, and it’s certainly not as gargantuan as the real deal. To remember everything that is in the salad, I went by a photo of a sign that I found on the web. If you have a mole at Intermezzo, please do tell all! Thanks for reading the blog!
TLK
March 5, 2009 at 12:17 pm |
[…] Kitchen has been without a grater since moving in and I have been in need. No grated carrots for salads, no grated cucumbers for tzatziki, no grated cheese for papusas, I have suffered long enough. […]
April 19, 2009 at 5:08 am |
try red wine vinegar to get the pink color! also i heard somewhere it was an egg based dressing, and the most diet-friendly, yours prob will be a great healthy alternative! …nll
September 30, 2009 at 3:29 am |
I did a version of this with 1/2 red wine vinegar and 1/2 apple cider vinegar–mayo instead of oil–Dijon instead of dry mustard–shallot instead of onion–fabulous!! Thanks for the inspiration! I’m going it with a Intermezzo salad knock-off tomorrow for dinner.