Dress to impress

Oriental fish dressing

This recipe comes from Willi Elsener at the Dorchester hotel, London, and is a dressing he uses for fish or shellfish. The recipe is a blend of strong, individual flavours. On their own they don't add up to much, but united they become a delicate dressing. The powerful flavour of walnut oil is softened by the milder sunflower, making it more palatable. The grated carrot releases sweetness and the tomatoes, which contain at least 60% water (juice), will give an extra twist of flavour during the marinating.INGREDIENTS

2tsp white wine vinegar

2tsp walnut oil

2tsp sunflower oil

1 pinch finely chopped, fresh, hot chilli pepper

1 small carrot, peeled and grated

1tsp fish gravy (nam pla)

1tsp sugar

1tsp chopped dried shrimps

1 medium-sized tomato, chopped

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

METHOD

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to stand for at least an hour. Press through a fine sieve to release the flavours.

The 1983 edition of Practical Cookery lists three key salad dressings for college chefs to master: vinaigrette, mayonnaise and acidulated cream. On the same page, there is a recipe for a Roquefort dressing and a Thousand Island dressing. How times - and tastes - have changed.

The rules for preparing dressings have also changed. Rather than pay slavish attention to a recipe, chefs now assert their creativity and knowledge of ingredients. The word vinaigrette has virtually disappeared from menus; mayonnaise is no longer made freshly in most kitchens, and is no longer really associated with leaf salads; and acidulated cream - four parts cream mixed with the juice of quarter of a lemon, according to Practical Cookery - is consigned to history.

And yet, those basics are the rocks upon which today's more adventurous creations are founded. The ingredients may have changed or become more refined, but the techniques remain essentially the same.

And the Roquefort dressing in Practical Cookery - mash 50g of the cheese with a fork and gradually add 125ml of vinaigrette, mixing continually - wouldn't be out of place in today's top restaurants. But it would be made differently, as Paul Gayler, executive chef at the Lanesborough hotel, explains. "We use Champagne vinegar, crÁ¤me fraÅ'che, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, nutmeg and chopped fresh chives in our Roquefort dressing. Sometimes I even add honey."

However, his technique is still the same: mash the cheese and gradually add the remaining ingredients. All that has changed is the range of ingredients.

Thousand Island dressing seems to have slipped out of favour. Willi Elsener, executive chef at the Dorchester hotel, says: "If an American customer asked me for a Thousand Island dressing, I would put it on the menu, but only if I could track down the original recipe. Otherwise I'd prefer to invent my own."

Rich variety of ingredients

He continues: "Dressings used to be just oil and vinegar and both of these were very standard. Now, the market is flooded with all sorts of top-quality vinegars that we can even flavour ourselves.

"I see the art of the modern dressing-maker being like an old-fashioned alchemist tinkering away in his cellar with his bottles and potions. I like to use combinations such as fennel seeds with orange or anise, lemon grass and even pepper. The list is endless. And when you have them at your fingertips, you can create anything you want to suit the salad."

Langan's Brasserie executive chef Ken Whitehead is a fan of raspberry vinegar. "It was really trendy for a while and it's gone out of fashion, but when it's good and used properly, it's magic. It still has a valuable place in any kitchen, but not as a fashion accessory."

For Whitehead, there is still room for the traditional vinaigrette. "There is nothing wrong with a perfectly made vinaigrette. It goes beautifully with frisée, lardons, poached eggs and croÁ±tons and it fits the more traditional image of Langan's. If the dressing fits the salad, you can't go wrong," he says.

For Elsener, the art of a really good dressing is a combination of understanding the basic techniques and understanding modern ingredients. "I like to taste vinegar as I would taste wine. That way, you get to know the true flavours and whether they need to be diluted or used on their own as a flavouring, like balsamic vinegar, which is more sweet than sour.

"It's the same with oil. Olive oil can sometimes have too much flavour and it can be better to use sunflower oil for its neutral balance. Flavouring oil is simple: just take a bottle of olive or sunflower oil and add herbs and leave to steep for a few days."

There's nothing new in this. Olio santo, created by adding basil leaves and whole chilli peppers to a bottle of extra virgin olive oil, has been on the Tuscan repertoire for decades, if not longer. It is considered modern in the UK, perhaps because Mediterranean cooking techniques are relatively new to us.

But in Elsener's dressing laboratory, the experiments don't stop at oils and vinegars. "If a vinegar is too strong, it must be diluted. You can use stocks, infusions, reductions and essences with vinegar to end up with the balance you need. You can fry up some shallots in a little oil and splash in some vinegar to reduce it, then dilute the result with whatever you require. If you are making a fish salad, you can use some fish stock in the dressing. Exploration and imagination are the keys to success with dressings." n