College Cooking – Ari’s Salad Dressing

After my first year of college, I decided to move out of the dorm. I still lived in a college-owned house with a handful of other students, but I was free of the dorm’s noisy hallways and the cafeteria that came with it. I relished the less crowded conditions and the freedom it provided, plus a meal plan is expensive. But it meant that I had to be responsible for food shopping and preparing meals, rather than just showing up, standing in line, and eating my fill. As an upperclassman, I never moved back into the dorm, opting to share rented houses in various states of disrepair with friends and classmates. One house lacked insulation, which led to ice forming on the inside walls in winter. It shared a walkway with a store that was formerly a gun shop; quite unnerving when a local with a gun in hand mistakenly rang our doorbell. Rental college housing is not always so classy.

During these years I don’t remember ever eating breakfast, and lunch was usually a hunk of cheese with chips and salsa from the co-op on campus, or more often than it should have been, a burger and fries from the college coffee shop. Then there were the rare occasions when I slipped into the cafeteria for a free meal. (Apparently my wife would visit the local Hare Krishna house from time to time for free food in exchange for a lecture when she was in college.)

Once we got organized, dinner was a different story; I joined a band of friends in a cooking group. We would pick a night, Sunday through Thursday, on which we each would cook for the others. One night I would have to worry about feeding three, four, or five people; the other evenings I showed up and was fed. Some of us were more adept in the kitchen, resulting in meals that varied in both quality and quantity, and everyone had different likes and dislikes, as well as expectations for meals. As a result the make-up of the cooking groups shuffled throughout the semester until I settled in a group that worked well for me.

Dinner was rarely fancy, and I don’t recall most of our menus, but it was always above the level of Kraft macaroni and cheese and instant ramen. The meal often consisted of a bowl of whatever, and that was it. Pasta with gussied up jarred red sauce, for example, and no salad, side, or bread. Maybe a bowl of homemade soup or chili, with no accompaniment. Often heavy on carbs and light on vegetables, it was like we were having an unwritten contest to see who could feed the group by spending the least amount of money. We were poor college students, after all. I recall one group who lived together earning the nickname Spud House because they had so little money and supposedly meals often revolved around potatoes.

Along with the knowledge we gained attending lectures, writing papers, and debating our opinions in class, cooking dinner in college was an education. I learned to cook foods I grew up on, and sometimes there were frantic calls to my parents for a recipe. Not only did we have to figure out how to shop and cook in proper portions, but we were forced to try new and unusual foods made by someone else in the group, and not insult each other when the meal someone else prepared was less than edible. I remember one housemate exclaiming his excitement that you could make a pasta dinner with peanut butter as a sauce (a rudimentary version of sesame noodles). I didn’t believe him until I tried it. Some uppity student from Brooklyn was shocked that I had never had gazpacho. I once got yelled at by another student and friend, Juliette (“You want me to eat that?!”), when I asked if she liked spicy food and if she wanted to join us for dinner when I made my father’s extra-spicy Burn Your Eyes Chicken. And my friend Emily and I often made patty melts served with ketchup and horseradish sauce packets swiped from the Arby’s fast food restaurant as we walked from campus to our home.

Over the last few years as my children have worked their way through college I have enjoyed watching them struggle with, learn about, and enjoy preparing meals. There have been numerous calls home about how to make this, that, or the other thing, and they have brought new ideas into my kitchen that they have learned from their friends or created on their own. I laugh when they don’t start eating until ten o’clock at night or when they ask about substituting one ingredient for another. But I am most happy that they did not spend all of their college years relying on cafeteria food, and that shopping and cooking for themselves and others has been an important part of growing up and their college education.

Ari’s Salad Dressing

My daughter, who is entering her final year of college, prepares a lot of East Asian-inspired food and salads among other things for dinner. She has taken an affinity to a particular brand of sesame salad dressing that is both relatively expensive and hard to find. I promised her I would try to re-create this dressing for her to enjoy it whenever she wants.

The result, while not an exact replica, is a reasonable facsimile of the original. It is simple to prepare, although it includes numerous ingredients, several of which I would not consider standard pantry items. But once you visit an Asian supermarket to procure these items (most of which are easier to find than the original dressing itself), you will always have them on hand to make the dressing and enjoy a delicious salad.

While the dressing is quite good on any pile of fresh vegetables, it is especially tasty on Asian vegetables, or those with a lot of crunch. Perhaps a few shreds of cabbage with your lettuce, along with bean sprouts and snow or sugar snap peas. Marinated pressed tofu sliced right from the refrigerator is my go to, but my daughter often spices and sears hers either on the stove top or in the oven. In its place you could easily put a few pieces of chicken, shrimp, or steak, and a dumpling or two or maybe a few slippery noodles would certainly round out the salad.

10 minutes, about ¾ cups

6 Tbsp. soy sauce

2 Tbsp. white vinegar

½ tsp. sugar

3 Tbsp. unseasoned rice vinegar

2 tsp. sesame paste (not tahini)

½ tsp. garlic powder

½ tsp. kosher salt

2 tsp. sesame oil

½ tsp. nutritional yeast

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. honey

1. Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl until well combined. Serve over salad.
2. Store remaining dressing in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to one month.

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