Caesar Salad

After eating all that food for the past couple weeks, I felt it was right to make myself a nice refreshing salad to balance out all the hefty delicious leftovers. I made one of my favorite salads ever. The caesar salad. It's not named after Julius Caesar, but for Caesar Cardini. A restauranteur living in San Diego. So it seems that this salad had its origins in good ol' Southern California. Also anchovies were never in the original recipe. As I've seen many recipes "claiming" to be the original. Those were just recent adaptations. So for you non anchovy lovers out there, here's a recipe that would more likely float your boat. You can view the rest this salad history via its Wikipedia page here.

There's a variety of ways to make the dressing and this salad if you look around the interweb. Some use anchovies, some use eggs, some use mayo. This is my version of doing it. Garlic, worchestshire sauce, parmesan, lemon juice, olive oil.  Simple basic ingredients I'm sure you'd have in your own pantry. I used to make it with a food processor, but you can also make the dressing using a mortar and pestle.

Makes 3/4 cup

Caesar Salad

Mixed Greens or 2 romaine hearts - washed and chopped
1/2 lbs cherry or grape tomatoes - sliced
1 ripe avocado - diced
mushrooms - your choice - sliced
shredded chicken or tuna - optional
courtons - optional

Dressing
2 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 tsp worchestershire saice
juice of one lemon
1/2 c extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c grated parmesan cheese (plus extra for topping on salad)
pepper to season

For food processor:
Chop the garlic, then add in the remaining ingredients. Pulse mixing after each one. Do this until a creamy consistency. Season with a little pepper. 

For mortar and pestle:
mash the garlic and mix in the extra virgin olive oil, worchestershire sauce and lemon juice. Then mash in the grated parmesan until a creamy consistency. Season with a little pepper.

Putting it all together:
Combine the ingredients of the salad together and drizzle the dressing over. Toss thoroughly.