I spent the weekend on Salt Spring Island for my 10 year high school reunion (I cannot believe it has been 10 years – I don’t feel old enough for that yet!). It was a really great weekend, full of sunshine, old friends, and good food – including some of the Salt Spring classics: dough boys covered in cinnamon-sugar at the Saturday Market, pesto-cheese twists from Barb’s Buns (now apparently Barb’s Bakery and Bistro), and the tuna melt at the Tree House Cafe. I have to admit though, one of my favorite things about going to Salt Spring is eating vegetables out of my Mum’s garden. She is an avid gardener and has a huge garden that produces all kinds of delicious things, including these salad greens, which traveled back to Victoria with me:
We ate quite a few salads while I was visiting, all dressed with Glory Sauce – a delicious, creamy, tangy dressing made with nutritional yeast. I first had a dressing very similar to this at Strathcona Lodge a few years back, and it was literally the best salad dressing I’d ever tasted, but I couldn’t recreate it. I was over the moon when my Mum made this stuff and gave me the recipe. It seems quite fitting to be sharing it after a weekend on Salt Spring because not only does nutritional yeast make a killer salad dressing, it is also what practically every Salt Springer puts on their popcorn, so much so that the local movie theatre supplies a shaker of nutritional yeast! Anyone not from Salt Spring, have you ever heard of this/tried it? I’m curious to know if it is really just a Salt Spring thing. Most non-Islanders who encounter it think it’s pretty weird…
Anyway, back to salad. I made myself a salad for lunch with these greens, half a can of tuna, some cherry tomatoes, a handful of toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds), and of course Glory Sauce. Mmm mmm. I suggest you do something similar!
Glory Sauce
From Hollyhock Cooks, where it is called “Hollyhock Yeast Dressing”, so I don’t know where “Glory Sauce” came from!** Be sure to use nutritional flake yeast, available in most natural/health food stores (NOT brewer’s yeast or bread yeast!) This is half the original recipe, which makes waaaay more than I can ever use, no matter how delicious it is. This scaled-down version makes about 1 1/4 cups. If you want to double the recipe to make the full original yield, note that the measurement for the water/soy/apple cider vinegar is 1/3 cup of each, rather than 6 tablespoons.
**EDIT: Apparently my Mum actually got this recipe from Whitewater Cooks rather than Hollyhock, but the same recipe appears in both books… Anyway, the Whitewater cookbook pairs it with rice and veggies in a “Glory Bowl”, hence the name!
Combine the following in a blender until thoroughly mixed:
1/4 cup nutritional flake yeast
scant 3 tbsp water
scant 3 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
scant 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 tbsp tahini (I just realized I forgot to add this, but the dressing still tastes fine, so if you don’t have it, no big deal)
With the blender on high, slowly pour in 3/4 cup neutral flavoured vegetable oil (olive oil’s flavour is too strong) until the dressing thickens – add it all, or stop when it gets to the desired consistency. Store in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
Mmmm, those photos make it look as good as it tastes! The recipe I use is actually called Glory Bowl Dressing, from the Whitewater Cooks book, by Shelley Adams, from the Fresh Tracks Cafe near Nelson, BC. Pretty much identical to the Hollyhock recipe, so I guess great cooking minds do think alike! Except the Whitewater people pour it over a bowl of rice topped with raw veggies and salad-y stuff (hence Glory Bowl), which is also really good.
The nutritional-yeast-on-popcorn thing was big in Victoria when I lived there, and the independent movie theatres had it. Yummy!
Hmm, maybe it’s a West Coast hippie thing then 😉
Damn, even extra virgin? Would olive oil ruin it?
Also, what does scant mean?
It might just make it taste strongly of olive oil – it would only ruin it if you don’t like that taste. Try it and see what you think! If you have a mild olive oil you might not taste it. I used grape seed oil, which is pretty neutral flavoured.
Scant means “just short of” – so a scant tablespoon is not quite a full, level tablespoon. 🙂
ok cool. I assumed it meant “roughly”… this is why our mothers teach us never to assume!
Does extra virgin olive oil count as “mild”?
I like the grapeseed oil idea – isn’t it the healthiest oil for you?
love you xo
The only way to tell if your olive oil is mild is to taste it 😉 If you don’t mind the taste of it, or it doesn’t overwhelm you with an olive-oily flavour, then it’s probably fine for this recipe.
Re: grapseed oil being the healthiest oil – that all depends on who you’re talking to. I use in instead of canola oil, because canola is often GM-contaminated and I try to avoid that when I can 😉
Markianna, actually any oil you have on hand that you don’t mind eating “raw” will work. The dressing is very strongly flavoured, so only if you’re a real purist will you notice any difference with different oils, IMHO. I use safflower or canola oil for the recipe and it tastes fine. But olive oil would be OK, too.
Wendy
I’m eating it with olive oil right now… f***ing delicious.
So good, right?!