Posted by Chef Jim on September 4, 2008 | Comments Off
Okay, I’ve about had it up to here with restaurants and food manufacturers claiming that the white goopy stuff they’re peddling is Caesar dressing. It’s not.
Real Caesar salad dressing is almost clear – maybe with a little brownish yellow tint because there should be an egg yolk and dissolved anchovies, along with some Worcestershire sauce and red wine vinegar.
Do you see anything that’s white – or off-white – in any of those ingredients?
So here’s a relatively brief lesson about the proper way to make a Caesar salad. First, the history of the salad in one sentence: In 1924 Caesar Cardini created the salad at his restaurant in Tijuana, concocting it from ingredients he had on hand. To add a little flair, he prepared the salad at tableside.
Another important fact about this salad: there are no tomatoes in it. Neither does it have onions, cucumbers nor any other type of produce except Romaine lettuce (and a garlic clove, but that has a very special use, that I’ll get to in a moment).
First, to make a proper Caesar salad, you should have a large wooden bowl (not glass, plastic, metal or anything else) in order to employ that garlic clove correctly. The clove is used to flavor the wood, so there is only the hint of garlic in your mouth. If you like, you can clip a small piece off the end of the garlic clove, and then rub the wood to impart the flavor of the garlic.
As for that egg, the original recipe calls for it to be raw, but health concerns dictate that it be coddled. That means that you simply drop the egg in boiling water for just a minute. It’s enough time to kill off anything dangerous that’s been lurking, especially on the shell.
The first tableside Caesar salad I had was prepared at a well-known restaurant in the old part of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The waiter wheeled a cart over to the table with an immense wooden bowl. I watched as he flavored the wood with a fresh clove of garlic. Then, with great flourish, he drizzled extra virgin olive oil down the sides of the bowl, so that it would carry the garlic with it as it collected in the bottom.
This next instruction is designed to help you get past your fear of anchovies. The canned varieties that we see are pungent little fellows, but pulverized to a paste-like consistency, they add a flavor that becomes surprisingly subtle and moves unexpectedly well into the background. Adding all the other stuff – like Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and red wine vinegar – certainly helps in quashing the pungency.
But when you’ve mixed all of those things together, along with some coarse salt, you’ve got a dark liquid, and that’s what real Caesar dressing looks like.
My waiter in San Juan opened up a crisp white kitchen towel to reveal perfect hearts of romaine lettuce, which – again with a flourish – he tore and tossed into the bowl. Then with wooden implements, he tossed the romaine around in the dressing, lightly coating them.
Finally, crispy little croutons were tossed in and freshly grated Parmesan cheese was offered to each diner, as well as cracked black pepper.
The perfect combination of acids and proteins coating cold and crisp romaine is a joy to eat. This is an easy dressing to make, too, because you don’t have to worry about it being a perfect emulsion. But try it and I wager you’ll turn your nose up (the way I do) when you’re offered that cloyingly blah creamy white stuff being foist on us as Caesar dressing.
Here’s my recipe:
1 large egg, coddled
1 garlic clove
4 anchovies
2 small heads of Romaine lettuce washed, patted dry, coarsely torn
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup olive oil 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup croutons
freshly squeezed lemon juice
Place the egg in boiling water for 1 minute and let it sit off the heat while you prepare the rest of the salad.
Rub a large wooden bowl with the garlic clove, coating the bowl with the garlic juices. Drizzle about half of the olive oil around the sides of the bowl, letting it collect at the bottom, then mash the anchovies with a fork until they turn to a paste. Slowly add the rest of the oil, then stir in the Worcestershire, mustard, salt and a little black pepper. Slowly add the red wine vinegar, the egg and then a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
Stir well, then add the romaine and toss. Add the croutons and Parmesan and toss again. Add freshly cracked black pepper.
