For March’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge, Ruth, Shelley and Sawsan asked us to totally veg out! We made salads and dressings, letting the sky be the limit as we created new flavors and combinations that reflect our own unique tastes.

I LOVE making my own salad dressings! if you have not tried that before, believe me, you are missing out!A  few  simple ingredients and some imagination and you can turn your salads from boring to mouthwatering in a matter of minutes.

The idea of making your own salad dressings may sound intimidating at first but in reality it is easier,cheaper, healthier and the taste is phenomenally better than the over-priced, preservative filled dressing you buy at the store.

For this month we chose to challenge the daring cooks to go beyond the dressings in a jar .The challenge was an invitation to dive into the vast and wonderful world of homemade salad dressings.

For this challenge I have made 7 mouthwatering salad dressings, I’ll post the first recipe today which is for my favorite tahini salad dressing and then a new salad dressing recipe every Sunday, I am thinking of calling the series “salad dressing Sunday”. If you have any special requests for recipes you want me to add to the series, please let me know in the comments. The recipes I have lined up for you are :

Tahini salad dressing (recipe below)

Homemade Italian salad dressing

A wonderful herb vinaigrette

Citrus poppy seed dressing

Ginger soya sauce salad dressing

Homemade ranch dressing from scratch

We’ll start the series with one of my favorite dressings. Tahini salad dressing. Tahini if you are not familiar with it is  a paste made from ground sesame seeds. It’s extremely versatile and can be used in cooking sweet and savory dishes. The best part about it is that it’s packed with essential vitamins and minerals!

This tahini dressing is super creamy and tangy. It works as a dip or a salad dressing. I usually use it to make a tahini salad which is very popular here in the middle east. A tahini salad is simply some chopped tomatoes, chopped parsley and this amazing tahini dressing. Simple, I know. But packed with refreshing flavors. You can also use it to top your favorite greens or add some grilled  eggplants to it and then turn it into baba ghanouj.

Tahini salad dressing

1/2 cup tahini paste
2-4 tablespoons lemon juice (depending on how much zing you like)
1 clove of garlic minced (optional)
2 tablespoons yogurt
salt to taste
1-2 tablespoons water (IF you want the dressing to be thinner)
1 tablespoon dried mint

Whisk the tahini with the lemon juice, at first it will get runny then it will thicken up and become lighter in color
add the garlic, yogurt, dried mint and salt and whisk until homogeneous.