I was thinking of my old inspiring Latin teacher here in this week’s blog as she was an avid fan of Caesar, the Emperor that is but maybe even of the famous salad too as it washed in on the American culture wave of the 1980’s.
So by now you will be familiar with the myriad versions of Caesar salad offering the “twist” or “take” on the original. Not that anyone even knows what the original is anymore or even how to spell it sometimes. You can just about name any ingredient at this stage and it has landed in the iconic salad. In the States they say a restaurant will be judged on its Caesar, well I have tried this too and been often disappointed.
So why has this dish ended up being so tossed about? Well, like all traditional dishes they are open to interpretation and the knives were certainly out for this one for decades now. Each generation of chefs become aggrieved at having to replicate the winning recipes of our predecessors and we are desperate to exercise our creative desires hence we must dabble with what has been passed down to us, mostly to the detriment of a great original dish I find. Most chefs will never invent an entirely new recipe in their career, maybe one or two if you are talented and lucky. Like painting and music the artist is a thief with very few real creators.
It’s okay now to dabble if you are really able to improve on a classic but if you are going to make it so far removed from what it was at first then really it needs to get a new name altogether. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have been pleased by a properly prepared original version of Caesar salad never mind a reinterpretation. Mostly I just count on myself knocking one up at home.
All great dishes have a great back story and this one is near the top of the culinary tale charts. Also there are usually several disputed claims as to who did what first in the invention of a dish and this is no exception but its generally recognized that an Italian chef named Caesar Cardini in Tijuana, Mexico near the American border ran out of food on a busy bank holiday weekend in the prohibition 1920’s and resorted to the old trick of taking the last of his cold room ingredients and creating a bit of theatre at each table making the salad in front of the diners.
The main dispute is that his brother Alex says he made it first and called it the Aviator salad as that was his previous job before he had opened the hotel. The ingredients were the same though, simply four in number, crisp whole romaine leaves, croutons fried in olive oil, fresh Parmesan cheese and a made to order salad dressing using coddled egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, some crushed garlic, sea salt, ground black pepper and olive oil.
When it ended up in Hollywood and New York, the tampering started in earnest, fresh anchovies, lemon instead of lime and mustard all became sworn in additions. Now we have everything from any lettuce with tomatoes, peppers, onion, capers, herbs and cucumbers to bacon, chicken, prawns, salmon and steak. You name it and it gets chucked in. As for the dressing, it has morphed into salad cream. If ever a dish had a case of the Chinese whispers this is it.
Preparation wise it is easy enough. Bite sized pieces of bread that will become your croutons by either leaving to sizzle gently in a pan drizzled with good olive oil or transfer to the oven till browned. These need to be served warm.
For the cheese use decent aged Parmesan and you can cut fine slivers with a knife or slice a small chunk of it and rub them on a grater, do not buy the pre grated or ready-made shavings, they just will not cut it.
To coddle an egg you simply plunge into boiling water for three minutes then break as normal discarding the white and letting the warm runny yoke be the real base for the dressing, adding a little crushed garlic, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice and whisking till creamy with real olive oil to your taste preference and then drizzle over your whole romaine salad leaves before adding the croutons and slivers or gratings of the room temperature cheese.
For the purists among yee the ultimate method is to have your big wooden salad bowl, make the dressing in the bowl itself then tossing the whole leaves, croutons and cheese with it before dishing it all out for everyone to help themselves. That is it, no messing, just stick to the original ingredients and method, don’t worry about measurements, its foolproof, be brave just go for it, as it was meant to be like this and when you try it yourself you will definitely dismiss anything else.
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