Via Carota Vinaigrette

The secret ingredient of Via Carota’s famous vinaigrette is a little warm water, which Jody Williams and Rita Sodi — the restaurant’s co-owners and co-chefs — add to smooth it out. As Williams told Samin Nosrat, who immortalized the restaurant’s insalata verde in a New York Times Magazine column, “We add warm water to make it more palatable,” she explained. “Pure vinegar is just too strong — it assaults the taste buds. We want a salad dressing so savory and delicious that you can eat spoonfuls of it. We want you to be able to drink it!”

Yep, that’s the secret to what Nosrat called “the best green salad in the world.” The recipe published in the New York Times is slightly different than this one, adapted from the Via Carota cookbook, which we chose as our Cookbook of the Year for 2022. The New York Times version includes some Dijon mustard and whole grain mustard, and uses honey instead of sugar.

This makes more than you’ll need for a salad for four, but it keeps refrigerated for up to 3 days — a quick way to make any salad special.

Makes enough dressing to dress two salads sized for four.

Ingredients

¼ cup tablespoons very finely chopped shallot (about 4 medium shallots)

1 garlic clove, finely grated (about ½ teaspoon)

¾ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

6 stems fresh thyme

¼ cup / 60 ml aged sherry vinegar

2 teaspoons warm water

¾ cup / 180 ml extra-virgin olive oil

Instructions

Place the shallots in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse with cold water. Drain them and transfer to a small bowl with the garlic, sugar and salt. Strip the thyme leaves off the stems and finely chop the leaves (for about 1 teaspoon thyme); stir into the bowl. Stir in the vinegar and water. Pour the olive oil into the bowl in a slow stream, whisking all the while emulsified.

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