The inspiration for this yummy salad comes from the Brown Sugar Kitchen cookbook by Tanya Holland. In it she features more than 80 recipes for recreating her Oakland, California soul-food restaurant’s favorites at home.
My son from from the San Francisco area selected this book to give me a few years ago when my sons and daughters-in-law each chose a cookbook for me for Mother’s Day. I have been enjoying all four books ever since.
I want to share with you this fantastic recipe for Homemade Thousand Island Dressing.
For the salad you can use either Little Gems or regular Romaine lettuce which are hearty enough to hold up to this delicious, thick, chunky dressing.
To the greens add boiled shrimp.
I prefer to buy frozen raw shrimp which have been shelled, deveined, and tail off for this recipe, and cook them myself.
This recipe calls for medium size shrimp. I added some sweet San Marzano pear shaped little tomatoes, but this salad doesn’t need much else.
The dressing is the star here. As the author says…
Many of us grew up with the bottled Thousand Island dressing, which seems quite mundane until you make it from scratch-then it becomes divine.
See for yourself…here’s the recipe…
Thousand Island Dressing ( Brown Sugar Cookbook, Tanya Holland )
1 egg
½ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons chili sauce, such as Heinz
1 tablespoon sweet pickle relish
1 green onion, white part only, chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped pimento-stuffed green olives
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
To make the dressing:
In a small saucepan, cover the egg with cold water and bring to a boil.
Once the water boils, cover the pan, turn off the heat, and let stand for 7 minutes. Drain and rinse the egg with cold water. Peel and chop the egg.
In a small bowl, combine the chopped egg, mayonnaise, chili sauce. pickle relish, green onion, olives, parsley, cayenne, paprika, and garlic powder.
Season with salt and pepper.
To make ahead, refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
The recipe can easily be doubled if you want to have extra on hand.
