Raspberry Vinegar salad dressing

Using Artisan Raspberry Vinegar to create a super-simple salad dressing.

An advantage of using quality ingredients is that there's less work for the cook to do - you can let the ingredients speak for themselves.

As I'm writing this, it's full summer and salads are the order of the day. Fresh leaves are everywhere - lettuce, spinach, water cress, coriander, parsley, mint.

With a simple green salad I like a fresh, fruity dressing. There's a place for a heavy dressing - but in the summer, in a green salad I often want something light and fresh and simple.

Artisan Raspberry Vinegar combines the sharpness of the vinegar, with the unmistakable flavour of raspberries, with a touch of inbuilt sweetness.

Other fruit vinegars are often made by taking a cheap wine or cider or spirit vinegar and adding fruit flavouring. That's not how we make our vinegars. All of our vinegars are made from 100% whole fruit. We don't use any concentrates, or flavourings, or purees. So, a batch of Artisan Raspberry Vinegar starts life as a heap of whole raspberries. We ferment them into a rich raspberry wine, then use our slow natural process to transform that wine into vinegar. We put it into barrels, add some extra raspberries for good luck, and leave it to mature in our lovely big cool Old Nuclear Bunker.

I know the recipe books tend to advise that a salad dressing should have lots of oil and a little vinegar. But I like lots of vinegar! And in a green salad dressing on a warm summer's day I like the light, fresh sharp/sweet flavours you get from simply mixing roughly equal parts of good olive oil with Artisan Raspberry Vinegar. Touch of salt, maybe some pepper. You can add some honey if you like - but there's already a nice bit of sweetness in the Artisan Raspberry Vinegar. That's it - easy peasy.

Mark Nattrass