Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Craving a Green Goddess salad?
In 1923, a silent adventure movie called “The Green Goddess” was released. And San Francisco’s grand Palace Hotel debuted its own invention, the Green Goddess salad, at the same time. The salad has seen a resurgence in recent years — and for good reason. The velvety, decadent, herbaceous dressing is a suitable springseason adornment to just about anything.
Now another San Francisco institution, Gayle Pirie and John Clark’s Foreign Cinema in the Mission district, is paying homage to the classic salad in the pages of their new “Foreign Cinema Cookbook: Recipes and Stories Under the Stars” (Abrams, $40). The book, due out May 15, celebrates the intersection of food, film and art in the same way their restaurant does.
Ready to build a better Green Goddess salad? Pirie has some tips: The lettuce “While romaine is traditional,” she says, “we prefer Little Gem lettuces for their attractive, compact heads of small, curly leaves that catch and hold the dressing.” The dressing “We add creme fraiche to our version for its velvety tang. Sour cream is a good substitute, but it won’t have that ultra silky texture. We like to use both red wine vinegar and lemon juice to lend an acidic depth, heighten the herbaceous flavor and punch through the rich creme fraiche-mayo base. We often pair different acids (like that) in a dish for a complementary complexity.” The finishing touches Some people add avocado to the dressing for richness, she says, but if you’re going to use avocado, “We like to keep slices separate for clarity and to lend a textural counterpoint. And we like to add a bit of dill to play off of the other, more signature herbs.”
Here’s the Foreign Cinema version of the classic salad: