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Monday, December 14, 2009

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.


20 comments:

Unknown said...

I love a good Caesar salad! Love your version. Beautiful.

Fresh Local and Best said...

I adore Caesar salad and I'm glad to know that it originated in southern California. I'm a fan of the anchovies, although your version looks very good.

Kana said...

I have been having Caesar salad for lunch for the past few days!

Debbie said...

Looks delicious! You can never have too much salad......

Andrea@WellnessNotes said...

Your salad looks & sounds wonderful! Great way to get some greens! :)

chow and chatter said...

looks wonderful and interesting history

Pam said...

I think avocado makes any salad better! This looks quite tasty Jenn.

Bob said...

I love a good Caesar salad and that looks wicked good! I have to try your dressing to, it sounds perfect.

teresa said...

mmm, i love cesar salad! i've never had the homemade version before, looks wonderful!

Sippity Sup said...

Make mine with anchovies please. GREG

Daily Spud said...

Gosh, I hadn't realised that the original *didn't* come with anchovies! I could certainly tuck into a bowl of your non-anchovy version, no problem :)

Diana said...

Caesar salad dressing - one of the few dressings I haven't made! Thanks for the recipe! I'll be trying this soon. :)

The Duo Dishes said...

Traditional and tasty. Making the anchovy dressing would be worth a try though!

Nutmeg Nanny said...

I'm a big caeser salad fan so I know I would love this!

Mary Bergfeld said...

I loved the bit of history you shared with us today. Your salad looks delicious.

Unknown said...

I was one of the uninformed who thought Julius himself must've been a salad lover. I stand corrected! Thanks for the info! (And great looking salad, too!)

Mags @ the Other Side of 50 said...

Caesar salad is my all-time favorite. I order it almost every time we go out to dinner. I love this recipe to make it at home.

Jen @ My Kitchen Addiction said...

Yum... Great salad. That's what I should have for dinner tomorrow. I need some lighter fare this week!

Anonymous said...

Hmmm this looks great, I really like this salads. In fact I made it at home for my husband 'cause he has dysfunctional problems and ate salads it's one of the best solutions, if they didn't like it they should visit Viagra Online

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Thanks so much for the article, pretty useful data.

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