Eat Well: Miso Good

The following post was written by my mom, WWW. Thanks, mom. xo

As I have often said before, salads in my house are more like a main dish than a side dish. I love making salads with chopped hearty greens (including cabbage and kale), herbs, fresh vegetables (such as chopped sugar snap peas), nuts, beans and LOTS of micro-greens.

Fable picking kale with our neighbor when Bec and fam were here visiting

Micro-greens, by the way, have been proven to have up to 6 times more nutrition than mature plants. And they taste amazing. They are not sprouts but rather plants grown from seeds in soil-filled flats.

I buy mine at the farmers’ market so I know they're fresh. My micro-greens guy, Ali, grows different types of sprouts—sunflower, buckwheat, pea, and mixed spicy—in large flats and cuts them right when I buy them. (For anyone living in San Diego, Ali has a stand—Fresh Cut Micro-greens—at Hillcrest, Encinitas, Leucadia, and Vista farmers’ markets and his girlfriend makes that wonderful sesame truffle salt I talked about a couple of weeks ago.)

I'm a big fan of homemade salad dressing and have often shared salad dressing recipes in this space (just type in “salad dressing” into Rebecca’s search engine and lots of recipes appear). My latest favorite is a lemon miso dressing that I have modified from a recipe I got from Alyssa and David. It is creamy and, because of the miso, has a delicious savory flavor. When I started writing Eat Well posts almost three years ago, I wrote a post describing my philosophy concerning vegetarian eating. One of the things I mentioned was the importance of adding umami—one of the five basic tastes—to recipes in order to satisfy meat cravings. Our tongues have specific receptors for sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and L-glutamate, which is the source of savory (umami) flavor. Meat is a powerhouse of L-glutamate so when we stop eating meat, we crave umami. By adding umami foods into our vegetarian dishes, we satisfy that craving, and miso has strong umami flavoring. It's no wonder Larry and I look forward to our salad every night. The miso dressing makes our vegetarian palates happy.

Creamy Miso Salad Dressing 

1 T miso paste (you can use any type you like)
2 T unsalted tahini (sesame seed paste)
1 t tamari sauce
2-3 pressed garlic cloves
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup good quality extra virgin olive oil

Mix all ingredients together in a jar and shake well.

(You might have to break up the miso with a fork, first, to incorporate it into the dressing.)

 Serve over your favorite greens or as a sauce over cooked vegetables.

Enjoy and love to all,

WWW