HAIL CAESAR SALAD!

While the press has spent the weekend tossing around names of candidates to replace the current President, I have been following compelling coverage of the 100th anniversary on July 4 of Caesar Salad.  Celebrating a salad beats reading about politics any day. We’ve been reminded of this most recently in the French movie, “The Taste of Things” when 18th century gastronome Brillat Savarin, speaking as Dodat-Bouffant proposes that, "The creation of a new dish gives more pleasure to humanity than the discovery of a star”.   

All the anniversary commentary trace the recipe from Caesar Cardini, the Italian owner of a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, to the iteration served today by his grandson.  Food writers credit the addition of garlic infused croutons and anchovies to its continuing popularity. My take on its longevity is the Caesar’s improvised nature.  This dish was thrown together on an evening when the kitchen ran out of its prepared menu. Leftovers and pantry staples were quickly assembled to serve waiting customers.  Since then, countless last-minute cooks have benefited from this salad’s ability to welcome added ingredients. 

The original Caesar Salad consisted of whole romaine lettuce leaves, a raw egg, Italian olive oil, grated Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire Sauce and lime juice. It was accompanied by slices of toasted French bread. Cardini had the showmanship to turn these basic ingredients into a table-side performance.  He introduced it as finger food, that is, the ingredients were whipped into a mayonnaise-like dressing into which whole lettuce leaves were dipped.  Why?  The restaurant had also run out of clean utensils!   

There you have it.  A century-old salad that was born of necessity and invention.  This is how many of us live today no matter how well we make plans. A final shout-out goes to Italian cuisine whose basic ingredients are loaded with umami, that ineffable essence of glutamate, the amino acid which rapidly activates the pleasure center in our brain.    

I will introduce my own Caesar Salad with Mini Crab Cakes in the Summer Seafood Salad class on July 17.  Please join us!