Ladies Lunches bring out my creative juices, thinking of what new dish would titillate my friends’ taste buds. On one such occasion, I needed to come up with a salad cum sauce. A few days before the intended Ladies Lunch, I had some left over salted red eggs, intense tomatoes, and rocket leaves. The light bulb in my head brought me back to the time my mother used to make vinagretta sauce. This vinagretta has nothing really to do with what is known as vinaigrette dressing; which is the vinegar, mustard, oil, salt and pepper dressing. The only common ground my mother’s vinagretta had to do with the vinaigrette is that it had white palm vinegar, oil, salt and pepper but the rest was the famous Kapampangans love for sauces. Mom’s vinagretta had tomatoes, salted red egg, onion, and pickle relish, plus the palm vinegar (sukang sasa), salt, pepper, and sugar. My mind went again on its hundred a minute spin. What if I jumble it in a different way and the result was just awesome! A salad cum sauce. You can eat it as a salad or use it as a sawsawan for grilled or fried seafood or fish. Best friend forever Marja says, “it’s good even with just rice.”

Ingredients:

• 500 grams tomatoes (my preferred varieties to use are kumato or intense tomatoes, but your favorite variety will do) – seeds removed, then diced
• 2 salted eggs (aka red eggs) – peeled, cut into tiny squares
• ½ to 1 half ripe (aka manibalang or not quite ripe) mango – chopped into tiny cubes
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• ½ cup horseradish – diced a little smaller than how you diced the tomatoes
• 4 cups coarsely chopped rocket greens

Procedure:

1. In a large serving salad bowl, mix all the ingredients except rocket greens.
2. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes. This will allow the flavors of the different ingredients to blend with each other.
3. When ready to serve, arrange the rocket greens on top. Let your family or guests add the rocket according to their preference, and they mix it when they serve themselves.