Posted by Bluestein 1 day ago
To me caesar salad is just dressing where the lettuce is only there to act as scaffolding.
In fact forget the salad.
I've had all of these served in restaurants in the US serving "American" food.
Got me at the "fruid salad: searched for it but found only "Freud" which sounded distinctly unappetizing.
I don't like vegetables fresh, I don't like them grilled, I don't like them stewed.
Cover them in Cesar dressing tho and I can eat an extra large salad (hopefully with some protein too).
You remain unconvinced that vegetables are good for you?
Jeez, I know this is predominantly US forum which is a place with its own fucked up nutrition and general eating problems that whole world sees, but this?
You simply have some (easy to dispose of if actually tried) mental barriers when food needs to be salty, greasy, sweet etc. and rest is untolerable, and salads are a rabbit food (or variant of these, heard it many times in many cultures). This all can be unlearned and new things learned, human mind is not that complex and can be molded like clay with a tiny bit of resolve, it doesn't even take a long time.
"You shall not pass!"
I read their point as being: the first time you try pizza you're like "this is delicious and amazing." The first time you try Caesar salad it lights you up in the same magical way.
I could be wrong of course - but that definitely fits my own experience. The first time I had a chicken CS as a kid in a restaurant, it was all I wanted to eat every time we went out for months afterwards. I genuinely couldn't believe 'salad' could be so delicious.
Since you’ve travelled enough to have a greater understanding, could you share with us your knowledge of a culture that makes flatbread but doesn’t put stuff on top of it? Where is that culture? What is their flatbread called?
Imeretian (Imeruli) khachapuri
Because it's in it, heh!
And BTW adjarian khachapuri is technically a pizza too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khachapuri#Types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%92%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%81%...
The big uncut leaves are suited for slow nibbling of token amounts of salad.
Croutons are recognizable from a distance as a non vegetable ingredient, making it attractive to someone who'd rather not eat vegetables at all. To me they're just stale bread.
> The big uncut leaves are suited for slow nibbling of token amounts of salad.
What does this sentence even mean?
Apologies for my non-native English. I'll try putting more words on it and maybe it will come out less convoluted.
It's easier to eat a lot of salad when it's finely cut. Then you just shovel in a portion with a bit of everything with every grab of the fork or spoon. With a large piece of lettuce, you need to cut it first, and then stab the piece with the fork, and then combine with other ingredients. Which makes eating that kind of salad a slow process. That's what I meant by "suited for slow nibbling of token amounts".
Basically anything you put into a salad is better off in a soup or stew, or heavily treated with such low-ph liquid (e.g. salsa, pickled veggies, etc) as to remove the risk. If it isn't suited for canning, I'm not going to eat it.
Perhaps in a country with better-regulated food production it would seem more reasonable.
If it’s an excuse not to eat salads because you don’t like them then fine, but maybe just own your food preferences instead of grossly exaggerating the dangers.
There’s likely multiple orders of magnitude difference between the numbers that “were reported” as part of a known outbreak vs the number of associated deaths that actually took place. People often get admitted without identification of what specific food caused them issues.
Further there’s reasons to avoid things that don’t result in deaths. “Each year in the United States an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of a foodborne disease caused by known pathogens.”
So their salad avoidance isn’t as extreme a reaction as you’re suggesting.
If your that concerned consider keeping some raw foods like oranges, bananas, pomegranate, onions etc which involve removing pealing the outer layer before consumption.
You are claiming some negligible risk from food poisoning that is in some level present in every country globally, and you are not incorrect. But with such mindset, world is such a very dangerous place that it isn't worth discovering it. Which would be a grave mistake, life is too short and you would miss most of the 'juice' life offers, which never comes without objective risks.
This is one of the weirder “everybody/nobody in Europe does x” claims I’ve seen. There’s no way you know what the fast majority of Europeans think and I know many Europeans who absolutely do avoid eating raw eggs.
Also raw eggs not mayo, and garlic in the oil for a while before making it.
I agree that anchovy is the secret, but I don’t use nearly this much for two salads, for me and my wife. I use half a jar of filets, which I more or less mince/mash. Do you leave big chunks in the dressing from the chopped filets? If so, I would guess that they are maybe a quarter the size of a caper, do you go bigger?
Do you make a lot of dressing and save it? We make it fresh every time, which also makes the batch size smaller.
- proportions? - substrate? - preparation? (i.e., blender or bowl, etc.) - timing?
and what kind of hot sauce?
... that can turn bland to grand.-
Tabasco is an interesting twist I’m going to have to try
Not surprising at all. Modern historians regard Augustus as the first emperor, whereas Julius Caesar is considered the last dictator of the Roman Republic.
Also what's with the lazy restauranteurs allowing their employees to serve lettuce without even chopping it? That's a deal breaker for me, if I am expected to chop the lettuce myself I'm ordering tap water only and no food and never ever EVER going back lol.
research in our historical archives backs up your claim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNc4EszNWn8
I've seen plenty of anchovy/mustard/aioli dressings that one might call predecessors, but they lack the egg yolks, parmigiano reggiano and Worcestershire sauce, so they would not taste like Caesar salad dressing.
Please share.
Of course I'm influenced by that lesson, even though it's perfectly arbitrary and I don't always follow it myself, nor do I complain if it's not strictly adhered to.
I also add fresh cooked bacon (NEVER bacon bits) and capers.
Yours sounds great with bacon and capers btw!
A simple vinaigrette with great olive oil, great vinegar, some crushed garlic and a bit of salt is better than the best possible bottled dressing.
Also a touch of mustard acts as an emulsifier, and is tasty too (and going gourmet in the mustard is worth it, like Pommery).
A yolk, a tsp of dijon, pepper, little salt, juice half a lemon, couple dashes of Worcestershire, couple anchovy filets, half a garlic clove.
Blend homogenous with a stick blender. Then slowly blend in a stream of neutral oil; get it to mayonnaise consistency. Taste and adjust (probably wants pepper). Then: back it out to dressing consistency with water (or lemon juice) a tsp at a time. [†]
Knobs (do any/all/none): grate pecorino or parm, just a bit, into the dressing in the first stage. Double, triple, or quadruple the anchovies. Add some white wine vinegar along with the lemon juice. Microplane the garlic (careful, will really amp the garlic). Before thinning back to dressing consistency with water, add some extra virgin. Pinch of MSG.
If you're being hardcore (ie date night), before you start the dressing, fill a ziploc with ice and put it in your salad bowl, and put your serving bowls in the freezer. Also hardcore: use half as much garlic, and make up the difference with 2x as much garlic confit.
Don't do the thing where you build the dressing on the salad (like, cracking an egg into the bowl or whatever). It's a parlor trick, not a way to dial in the ideal Caesar. Also don't bother with the "rub the garlic into the salad bowl" thing; just makes it harder to dose the garlic.
Extra tip: freshly roasted brussels sprouts love Caesar dressing. (Roasted brussels sprouts love any bright high-fat sauce; Caesar is just the platonic ideal.)
Keeps about a week in the fridge, but each time you use it, refresh the acid (just a splash or lemon juice or vinegar).
(I make a lot of Caesars).
Take a step back and see a Caesar as an anchovy vinaigrette, and then you can immediately vary it to different settings --- lime instead of lemon, add some chile (or aji amarillo), tortilla instead of croutons, fresca instead of parm.
[†] You can also just blend neutral oil in until you get the dressing consistency you want; theoretically you'll get a better texture and a little more flavor concentration this way, but I think the win is marginal vs. being able to knock this dressing out mechanically without thinking hard about it, and you can just dial up the flavors a bit beforehand if you're worried.
(And customizable - I usually make mine with a little more garlic. This last time I tried making it with a whole-grai. Mustard and the results were delightful.)
