Green Goddess Dressing
Green Goddess Dressing is one of the most versatile sauces in my kitchen arsenal. You can change up its flavour profile, depending on the dish you want to create, just by changing the main herb. When I’m thinking fish, I go with either dill or coriander and, with chicken, I usually choose tarragon, if its available. Green Goddess Dressing is best made within a few hours of serving. I usually plan to make two meals with one batch over two days. To do this, you need to ensure the chopped avocado is well covered with lemon juice so the sauce doesn’t go brown overnight. And, yes, you can swap in low fat yoghurt or mayo but it will be runnier and, honestly, it’s never going to be as delicious as when you use full fat! You can also bump the sauce up to dip status by swapping out the mayo and yoghurt for quark, mascarpone or regular Philadelphia cream cheese.
Equipment
- Food processor (minimum 3 cup capacity)
- Citrus juicer
- Garlic crusher
- Salad spinner (optional)
- Kitchen scissors
Ingredients
- 200 g full fat Greek yoghurt
- 200 g full fat mayonnaise
- 1 large clove garlic (crushed)
- 2 anchovy fillets
- 2 tablespoons capers (drained)
- 1 long green chili
- 1-2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 large ripe avocado
- 1 medium bunch main herb (tarragon, dill or coriander)
- 1 medium bunch chives
- 1 medium bunch Italian parsley
- 2 sprigs mint
- 1 medium lemon juiced (zest optional)
- Sea salt
- White or black pepper (ground)
Instructions
- Wash and spin all herbs. Pick leaves from stems (small stems are fine) and lay the herbs out between two layers of paper towel or two clean tea towels. Roll up and refrigerate until needed (you want them as dry as possible).
- Split the green chili lengthwise, remove seeds and white membrane. Roughly chop.
- Zest (optional) and juice lemon.
- Halve the avocado, deseed and remove from skin. Roughly chop and sprinkle well with lemon juice.
- Add garlic, anchovies, capers, chili, 1 teaspoon sugar and a pinch of salt to the food processor. Pulse until very finely chopped (don’t scrape down).
- Add avocado, mayonnaise, yoghurt and herbs (I snip chives into small batons) and pulse, scraping down several times in this step, until herbs finely chopped and sauce well combined.
- Taste and adjust seasoning with pepper, salt, lemon juice and sugar. Don’t feel you need to use all the lemon juice.
- Empty into a sealed container and refrigerate until required.
Just before you cook with abandon…
Yoghurt/Mayonnaise: This is a dressing, sauce, or dip depending how you want to use it. When you use full fat yoghurt and mayonnaise, you’ll find the dressing will hold its shape better. The lower the fat content, the runnier it will be. It does make a great dip and it can be as full fat or low fat as you like depending on what base ingredients you use. Quark is European cottage cheese and works well, it has light and full fat varieties. Mascarpone or regular Philadelphia cream cheese combined with yoghurt will also make a great dip consistency.
Quantities: The quantities in the recipe are meant to be a guide only. Changing up the amount of base ingredients you use will change how intensely herby Green Goddess will be. I recommend holding back some of the sugar, lemon juice, salt and pepper, so you can adjust the final balance of the dressing to your taste.
Kitchen scale: I truly believe a kitchen scale is a necessity but remember you can always Google conversions of any ingredient from grams to cups. In this recipe any minor differences between volume and weight are not going to ruin the result. But totally different if you’re baking!