The story behind Caesar salad
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
To me caesar salad is just dressing where the lettuce is only there to act as scaffolding.
I've had all of these served in restaurants in the US serving "American" food.
Got me at the "fruid salad: searched for it but found only "Freud" which sounded distinctly unappetizing.
In fact forget the salad.
I don't like vegetables fresh, I don't like them grilled, I don't like them stewed.
Cover them in Cesar dressing tho and I can eat an extra large salad (hopefully with some protein too).
You remain unconvinced that vegetables are good for you?
Jeez, I know this is predominantly US forum which is a place with its own fucked up nutrition and general eating problems that whole world sees, but this?
You simply have some (easy to dispose of if actually tried) mental barriers when food needs to be salty, greasy, sweet etc. and rest is untolerable, and salads are a rabbit food (or variant of these, heard it many times in many cultures). This all can be unlearned and new things learned, human mind is not that complex and can be molded like clay with a tiny bit of resolve, it doesn't even take a long time.
"You shall not pass!"
Since you’ve travelled enough to have a greater understanding, could you share with us your knowledge of a culture that makes flatbread but doesn’t put stuff on top of it? Where is that culture? What is their flatbread called?
Imeretian (Imeruli) khachapuri
Because it's in it, heh!
And BTW adjarian khachapuri is technically a pizza too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khachapuri#Types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%92%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%81%...
After she clarified that I could be /any/ dressing, I asked what made it a "Caesar salad". She cheerfully replied, "The Romain lettuce."
I read their point as being: the first time you try pizza you're like "this is delicious and amazing." The first time you try Caesar salad it lights you up in the same magical way.
I could be wrong of course - but that definitely fits my own experience. The first time I had a chicken CS as a kid in a restaurant, it was all I wanted to eat every time we went out for months afterwards. I genuinely couldn't believe 'salad' could be so delicious.
The big uncut leaves are suited for slow nibbling of token amounts of salad.
Croutons are recognizable from a distance as a non vegetable ingredient, making it attractive to someone who'd rather not eat vegetables at all. To me they're just stale bread.
> The big uncut leaves are suited for slow nibbling of token amounts of salad.
What does this sentence even mean?
Basically anything you put into a salad is better off in a soup or stew, or heavily treated with such low-ph liquid (e.g. salsa, pickled veggies, etc) as to remove the risk. If it isn't suited for canning, I'm not going to eat it.
Perhaps in a country with better-regulated food production it would seem more reasonable.
If it’s an excuse not to eat salads because you don’t like them then fine, but maybe just own your food preferences instead of grossly exaggerating the dangers.
There’s likely multiple orders of magnitude difference between the numbers that “were reported” as part of a known outbreak vs the number of associated deaths that actually took place. People often get admitted without identification of what specific food caused them issues.
Further there’s reasons to avoid things that don’t result in deaths. “Each year in the United States an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of a foodborne disease caused by known pathogens.”
So their salad avoidance isn’t as extreme a reaction as you’re suggesting.
You are claiming some negligible risk from food poisoning that is in some level present in every country globally, and you are not incorrect. But with such mindset, world is such a very dangerous place that it isn't worth discovering it. Which would be a grave mistake, life is too short and you would miss most of the 'juice' life offers, which never comes without objective risks.
This is one of the weirder “everybody/nobody in Europe does x” claims I’ve seen. There’s no way you know what the fast majority of Europeans think and I know many Europeans who absolutely do avoid eating raw eggs.
If your that concerned consider keeping some raw foods like oranges, bananas, pomegranate, onions etc which involve removing pealing the outer layer before consumption.
Apologies for my non-native English. I'll try putting more words on it and maybe it will come out less convoluted.
It's easier to eat a lot of salad when it's finely cut. Then you just shovel in a portion with a bit of everything with every grab of the fork or spoon. With a large piece of lettuce, you need to cut it first, and then stab the piece with the fork, and then combine with other ingredients. Which makes eating that kind of salad a slow process. That's what I meant by "suited for slow nibbling of token amounts".
Tabasco is an interesting twist I’m going to have to try
... that can turn bland to grand.-
Also raw eggs not mayo, and garlic in the oil for a while before making it.
I agree that anchovy is the secret, but I don’t use nearly this much for two salads, for me and my wife. I use half a jar of filets, which I more or less mince/mash. Do you leave big chunks in the dressing from the chopped filets? If so, I would guess that they are maybe a quarter the size of a caper, do you go bigger?
Do you make a lot of dressing and save it? We make it fresh every time, which also makes the batch size smaller.
- proportions? - substrate? - preparation? (i.e., blender or bowl, etc.) - timing?
and what kind of hot sauce?
Also what's with the lazy restauranteurs allowing their employees to serve lettuce without even chopping it? That's a deal breaker for me, if I am expected to chop the lettuce myself I'm ordering tap water only and no food and never ever EVER going back lol.
research in our historical archives backs up your claim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNc4EszNWn8
Of course I'm influenced by that lesson, even though it's perfectly arbitrary and I don't always follow it myself, nor do I complain if it's not strictly adhered to.
I've seen plenty of anchovy/mustard/aioli dressings that one might call predecessors, but they lack the egg yolks, parmigiano reggiano and Worcestershire sauce, so they would not taste like Caesar salad dressing.
Please share.
Not surprising at all. Modern historians regard Augustus as the first emperor, whereas Julius Caesar is considered the last dictator of the Roman Republic.
I also add fresh cooked bacon (NEVER bacon bits) and capers.
A yolk, a tsp of dijon, pepper, little salt, juice half a lemon, couple dashes of Worcestershire, couple anchovy filets, half a garlic clove.
Blend homogenous with a stick blender. Then slowly blend in a stream of neutral oil; get it to mayonnaise consistency. Taste and adjust (probably wants pepper). Then: back it out to dressing consistency with water (or lemon juice) a tsp at a time. [†]
Knobs (do any/all/none): grate pecorino or parm, just a bit, into the dressing in the first stage. Double, triple, or quadruple the anchovies. Add some white wine vinegar along with the lemon juice. Microplane the garlic (careful, will really amp the garlic). Before thinning back to dressing consistency with water, add some extra virgin. Pinch of MSG.
If you're being hardcore (ie date night), before you start the dressing, fill a ziploc with ice and put it in your salad bowl, and put your serving bowls in the freezer. Also hardcore: use half as much garlic, and make up the difference with 2x as much garlic confit.
Don't do the thing where you build the dressing on the salad (like, cracking an egg into the bowl or whatever). It's a parlor trick, not a way to dial in the ideal Caesar. Also don't bother with the "rub the garlic into the salad bowl" thing; just makes it harder to dose the garlic.
Extra tip: freshly roasted brussels sprouts love Caesar dressing. (Roasted brussels sprouts love any bright high-fat sauce; Caesar is just the platonic ideal.)
Keeps about a week in the fridge, but each time you use it, refresh the acid (just a splash or lemon juice or vinegar).
(I make a lot of Caesars).
Take a step back and see a Caesar as an anchovy vinaigrette, and then you can immediately vary it to different settings --- lime instead of lemon, add some chile (or aji amarillo), tortilla instead of croutons, fresca instead of parm.
[†] You can also just blend neutral oil in until you get the dressing consistency you want; theoretically you'll get a better texture and a little more flavor concentration this way, but I think the win is marginal vs. being able to knock this dressing out mechanically without thinking hard about it, and you can just dial up the flavors a bit beforehand if you're worried.
(And customizable - I usually make mine with a little more garlic. This last time I tried making it with a whole-grai. Mustard and the results were delightful.)
It's literally a three minute recipe that I can autopilot.
A simple vinaigrette with great olive oil, great vinegar, some crushed garlic and a bit of salt is better than the best possible bottled dressing.
Also a touch of mustard acts as an emulsifier, and is tasty too (and going gourmet in the mustard is worth it, like Pommery).
Yours sounds great with bacon and capers btw!
That's not at all surprising.
The Caesar dressing is in the family of oil and vinegar mixtures with flavorings and emulsifiers.
The salad also has croutons (pieces of toast flavored with some of the dressing) and grated hard, dry cheese, Parmesan or Pecorino Romano (and I prefer the second).
The lettuce is Romaine. If separate the leaves, rinse them, shake dry, wrap in some clean kitchen towels, refrigerate for several hours, then the lettuce usually will be crisp, which is desirable. Just before combining all the ingredients to make the actual salad, tear the leaves into irregular pieces.
For the egg, boil it the 10 seconds not to cook the egg but to sterilize the outside before cracking the egg.
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Note:
This oil/vinegar mixture has close to the usual (by volume) 3 parts of the oil to 1 part of vinegar. For a brighter flavor, might use more vinegar, maybe as high as a ratio of 3 to 2.
And the other measurements here are also subject to change.
One issue is, some of the ingredients, e.g., basil, oregano, parsley, fresh versus dried, can vary in flavor by a lot. Some garlic is mild and some very strong. And the flavors of the red wine vinegar and olive oil vary.
So, the results tend to vary, between two cooks a lot and even between two trials by one cook.
So for each trial, it's good to have good notes on what did so that can repeat the trial if it was good or adjust the trial if it was not.
So, the notes here are from some trials that seemed good but are subject to adjustment.
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Abbreviations (common in the US)
T -- tablespoon
t -- teaspoon
C -- cup
Good to have three bowls, 1 quart plastic or stainless, 5 quart stainless, ~3 quart wooden.
The wooden bowl is for style and the serving, and the large volume of the 5 quart bowl is to ease tossing the croutons and lettuce to coat them with the Caesar dressing.
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Caesar Dressing.
In a one quart bowl, combine
1 egg boiled 10 seconds
1 T Worcestershire sauce
2/3 C red wine vinegar (what you pay
for wine vinegar can vary
significantly)
1 1/2 T finely minced garlic
3 T Dijon mustard (what you pay for
the mustard can vary significantly)
1/2 T basil (fresh or dried)
1/2 T oregano (fresh or dried)
2 T parsley (fresh or dried)
1/2 t salt
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
One 2 ounce can flat anchovies packed
in oil, minced, with the oil
2 C olive oil (what you pay for olive
oil can vary significantly)
Add olive oil slowly with whipping. Seek good emulsification of the oil with the vinegar and the rest.
Makes about 3 C.
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Grated Cheese.
Grate some solid Parmesan or Pecorino Romano hard, dry cheese to yield ~1 C of grated cheese.
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Toast for Croutons.
Toast four slices of bread (might use some bread other than US lunch box white bread). Stack the four slices and cut in two parallel cuts, rotate 90 degrees and repeat so cut each slice of toast into 9 pieces.
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Dress the Lettuce.
In 5 quart stainless steel bowl, tear three Romaine hearts into irregular pieces.
Add 3/4 C of the dressing (right, will have plenty of dressing left over for more salads).
Toss.
Goal is to flavor the lettuce with the dressing but still keep the lettuce crisp, not wet or 'soggy'; so try to use the least dressing for the needed flavor.
Notes:
A nice way to present and serve is with a stylish wooden salad bowl full of the salad with croutons and grated cheese on top.
Thus the stylish wooden bowl is too small for tossing; use the 5 quart bowl for tossing and the wooden bowl for presenting and serving.
For the serving, might also use some stylish wooden salad tongs or fork and spoon.
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Toss Croutons.
Add the cut toast to the 5 quart bowl and toss with some of the salad dressing.
Goal is just to flavor the toast but keep it crisp, not soft or soaked.
Add the toast on top of the dressed lettuce in the wooden salad bowl.
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Sprinkle the grated cheese over the toast.
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Serve.
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With the egg, bread, cheese, and oil, it's filling.
But, the dressing yields about 3 cups with 2 cups of oil (plus the oil with the anchovies). The 2 cups is 32 tablespoons at 125 calories per tablespoon, ..., might feed 32 people. In that case, leave the dressing as is and increase the lettuce, bread, and cheese.
Ive had good salad dressings like this where they actually list worschestchire sauce and then in the parenthetical ingredients to that it doesnt have any anchovy or fish given and also not in the usualy summation of various allergenic food categories. I just worry its hidden in the Natural Flavor bullcrap