Ashitaba Creamy Green Goddess Dressing

By Esther Boateng

Homemade dressings are one of the easiest, and cost-effective ways to upgrade the nutrient content of any dish, such as a plate of cooked vegetables, crudité, or eggs. There’s little room for error if you follow one of the golden rules of cooking: taste as you go. This is one of the reasons why dressings will always be firm favorites in our household.

Whenever I make a dressing, I always taste it to make sure the flavors are complimentary and well balanced. Sampling your food as you go gives you an opportunity to adjust the seasonings to your liking. I always err on the side of caution when making a Green Goddess dressing, especially when dealing with strong-tasting ingredients like anchovies, Dr. Cowan’s Pepper Salt, or lemon, for example. You can always add more of an ingredient, but it’s harder to reverse the damage, if for example, you add too much salt or garlic. 

On this occasion, even though I only used one clove of garlic, it turned out to be quite strong, so I increased the amount of lemon juice to balance out the flavor. Lemons help dilute the strong taste and smell of garlic. I learned this during my juicing phase, when I used to chug down shots of freshly squeezed garlic with lemon juice. I like the taste of garlic, and enjoy its benefits, but I don’t want to reek of garlic each time I consume it.

The quality of your ingredients determines the quality of your dish to a large extent.  When I buy avocados, I go out of my way to get “up close and personal.” I make sure they’re not too hard or overly ripe. For this recipe, you want deliciously ripe and creamy avocados. If you can’t find any, you can buy hard ones, and leave them to ripen in a paper bag over a couple of days or so. Needless to say, the creamier they are, the better your dressing will taste. Sour cream or mayonnaise also adds some creaminess to this recipe.

Store bought dressings became a thing of the past when I discovered how to make homemade dressings, soups, and sauces. In fact, I stopped buying any item from the store that I could easily re-create at home, like nut butters, bone broth, strawberry jelly etc.  At times, it feels like an effort to make dressing and other such items. But after a while, when you get accustomed to the difference in taste, it makes you think twice about reaching for a shelf-stable jar or dressing with potentially questionable ingredients.

Ashitaba Creamy Green Goddess Dressing

Ingredients:

2 medium size ripe avocados

1 tsp Dr. Cowan’s Ashitaba Powder

1 small garlic clove

1 tsp anchovy paste (optional)

1 tsp Dr. Cowan’s High-Protein Leaf Powder

¼ cup freshly packed mint laves

2 Tbsp sour cream or mayonnaise

1 Tbsp olive oil (optional)

1 stalk celery (optional)

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

¼ cup basil leaves

¼ cup chives (optional)

¼ teaspoon Dr. Cowan’s Pepper Salt

¼ tsp salt to taste

Directions:

• Peel and chop the garlic. You can also use a garlic press. If you chop, press or crush raw garlic and let it breathe for about 10 minutes, it releases an enzyme called allicin. This is what gives garlic its distinctive smell, and its therapeutic benefits.
• Put all the ingredients into a hand-held blender and blend until you get your desired consistency.
• Tips:
  • If you want a thinner dressing, you can add some celery and olive oil. I prefer thick and creamy dressings, so I left out the celery and used some olive oil during the blending process.
  • You’ll probably notice that a recipe with few ingredients will suit a smaller blender. If I use my high-speed blender for dressings, some of the ingredients get stuck at the bottom, and I spend too much time scraping down the sides of the blender, so I prefer to use a small hand-held one.