Face it, if you like Cesar Salads in most restaurants, you also probably like canned fruit, white bread, etc.  Cesar salad unites the two worst things in the American diet: romaine lettuce (even iceberg has its teen male-fantasy sexyness; think Brigitte Nielsen in Rocky IV), and the inescapable adjective, “creamy.”  Take blandest of industrially grown lettuces and put creaminess on top, perhaps in some festive form involving whole spears of the lettuce leaves, or if you really shirk every encounter with flavor, just the hearts of the romaine, et voilà.

The beauty of the common Cesar Salad (Caesarius banalus) is that it give us everything we crave: saltiness (from the parmesian or pecorino cheese), crunchiness from the lettuce, and of course, creaminess, which reminds us of those cherished days when mom and dad would go out on a much needed date and leave us at home with a perky young babysitter and a warm oven full of defrosted chicken pot pies.  Like so much in our diet, the Cesar Salad is kids food gussied up for show at the adult diningroom table.

All aforementioned legal formalities dispensed with, it goes without saying that Caesar is the king of salads, conquering nations and enslaving its people.  The Caesar: assertive garlic, citrus, and pepper on tumescent greens glistening under a dewey veil the color of cornsilk.  I am here to praise the Caesar Salad not to bury it.

My Caesar Salad is–not to put too fine a point on it–the best available, anywhere, ever, provided you are not in the mood for rice crispy treat gooey mac and cheese nostalgia.  Obviously if you have a last name with more syllables than your lungs have wind to power, like Vongerichten or if you have at your disposal a stable of the world’s most passionate sous chefs and “a privately owned auberge situated in the French Huguenot valley of Franschhoek” and chicken eggs raised on grubs fed from the chef’s virgin daughter’s own lips, maybe, just maybe you can compete with my Cesar Salad in the eyes of wax-twisted moustachiod restaurant critics–but your sous chefs will still be sitting at my peasant’s table.  Fighting words.

To make the best Cesar Salad, one delicate enough to precede almost any meal yet hearty enough to suffice as  meal in itself:

  1. Cut three or four slices of Como or other firm crusty European-style white bread into cubes and set on cookie sheet
  2. Set cookie sheet with bread cubes in oven at 350 degrees
  3. Squeeze 2 small-ish or 1 1/2 medium-ish lemons into a quart mason jar
  4. Crack 1 free-yard, bug fed chicken’s egg into the jar
  5. Press 2 or 3 cloves garlic into jar (the only excuse for owning a garlic press is Cesar Dressing)Scalia Anchovies are the best achovies for caesar salad dressings
  6. Mince three or four Scalia anchovy filets and add to jar (Scalia are the best Cesar Salad dressing anchovies I have ever enountered–nutty, buttery, delicately perfume, bringing richness and balance where no (or few) other jarred, salted, or fresh-marinated anchovies can compare).
  7. Arrange remaining anchovies on a plate from which guests may serve themselves
  8. Pour olive oil remaining in anchoy jar into the mason jar
  9. Crack 2 or 3 teaspoons good black pepper (like Parameswaran’s pepper) into the jar
  10. Add 1 teaspoon good red wine vinegar (a TOP SECRET secret that I can’t believe I am sharing with the likes of Vongerichten and Ripert and Waters).  I am crazy about Toro Albala, which may or may not be available in the future
  11. The jar is now filled about 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch of liquid, mostly acid parts of the dressing.  It is time for the oil.  Here comes another TOP SECRET tip that assures a salad that is both light and full flavored:
  12. Add 1 part grape seed oil and 1 part very good but not absurdly expensive olive oil (I use Almazara Luis Herrera Aceite de Lagrima Olive Oil, which has great fruit and vegetable and floral notes).  The two parts combined should just-less-than-double the amount of liquid in the jar, so you should now have something like 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches of liquid in the jar, total.  Keeping the amount of oil lower than the amount of acid brings the balance we are looking for, and cutting the amount of olive oil in half creates a beautiful lightness to the body/mouthfeel of the dressing
  13. Tighten top onto the jar and shake like mad for 15 seconds to blend and emulsify
  14. Turn bread crumbs on cookie sheet to brown more evenly
  15. Wash and dry 1 head of very good romain lettuce, preferably from your garden or a local Farmer’s Market
  16. Break letuce into a large salad bowl in pieces small enough to to toss but big enough to be a hassle (cutting down on the pretension level of the salad while still leaving you with a substantial piece of green to cut and fork and crunch and occasionally make a mess with while you eat)
  17. Grate 1/2 cup good Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and set aside.  Parmigiano Reggiano is ideal because it is less salty, more nutty, and more delicate than cheap parmisan cheese or most commonly available pecorino cheeses
  18. Remove bread cubes from oven and let cool, observing that they are now a toasty golden color, and formidably hard and brittle
  19. Shake dressing again for a few seconds, and then spoon from the bottom (to help get some of the bits of garlic and anchovy) onto the salad and toss until all leaves are nicely coated
  20. Add bread cubes to fill around 3/4 of the mason jar containing the remaining dressing, and turn jar back and forth a few times to soak the cubes in the dressing
  21. Sprinkle half the grated parmisan cheese on the leaves and toss to distribute evenly
  22. Turn mason jar to re-coat bread cubes.
  23. When the cubes have soaked up all the dressing, pour them over the greens and toss
  24. Serve the salad onto large plates, and sprinkle lightly with some of the remaining parmesan
  25. Advise guests not to shy away serving themselves additional anchovies

The amount of garlic and pepper can be adjusted to taste, but I advise even the most ardent anchovy avoiders to use the full amount of anchovies, especially if they are good ones, as they are responsible for they are largely responsible for the majesty of the Caesar Salad.

Serve with dry white wine or classic provencal rosé wine.

markbitterman :: Aug.31.2008 :: Eat :: 1 Comment »