I Come to Make a Caesar, Not to Praise It

When I was doing my time in the restaurant business in Portland, OR, in the 1990s, the "in" restaurant at the time was called Zefiro. This place followed the "little black dining room" model to success: a minimal space accented with oversized black-and-white art, giant fishbowl windows so that anyone and everyone could see that where and what you were eating, and serious food that I remember as being inspired and consistent.

Since I was earning about $5 an hour at the time, I didn't get to eat at Zefiro very often. But, once I left the line and start schlepping fish, I did have the good fortune of taking on Zefiro as a customer and getting to know the talented chefs who would see that kitchen gently into it's good night (for Zefiro did what few restaurants do: it close gracefully when it was at the top of its game instead of fizzling into mediocrity.) One of my favorite industry memories recalls some crazy efforts I made to get fresh razor clams to Zefiro for a risotto that the chef at the time wanted to offer to Julia Child, who was in town for an International Association of Culinary Professionals conference. I got the chef her clams, and she integrated the risotto onto a menu of far-reaching imagination and complexity. I took a table for lunch that day, hoping to get a glimpse of the living legend. Child came in, a giant of a woman even with her chin touching her chest from osteoporosis, and took a seat. She gave the menu a quick glance, and then ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell, a Caesar salad, a cheese burger, and a whole bottle of Merlot to wash it down. To tell the truth, I was having the cheese burger myself, much as I love razor clams.

Zefiro was really committed to the Caesar salad, and this, rather than my addled restaurant recollections, is the subject of this post.

So, what is it with this salad? I conservatively put the number of Caesars I have eaten in the tens of millions, that I have made in the hundreds of thousands. You'll find the thing, in various guises, on menus from Fuddruckers to the French Laundry. Dolled up with rubber chicken, it's a staple of appalling boxed lunches at conventions, yet it is quite at home amidst fine china and white linen. And, for many of us, it ranks as a comfort food along with mac 'n cheese and chocolate-chip cookies.

Supposedly, the thing was invented in Tijuana by one Caesar Cardini sometime in the thirties. The original recipe arguably included only Parmigiano-Reggiano and plain croutons, oil, lemons, eggs, garlic, and worcestershire sauce. And the eggs were supposed to be coddled. (Don't know what that is? Good. It's a silly thing to do to an egg, which produces little effect, apart from making the egg, well, clumpy.) Some people like to get hot under the collar about the "purity" of the original recipe. In fact, Julia Child herself, in From Julia's Kitchen, rails against the inclusion of anchovies in the dressing. But the caesar salad is like the language, a living thing. It moves, breathes, and changes. People screw with it, add things, take them away.

Here's my stance on the caesar:

Have fun with the goddamned thing. It's a salad, not the bar exam. There are no right answers.

I like to start with cut romaine. I prefer it to torn because I think that cutting leaves the leaves (snicker) crisper and less bruised. And it's faster. If you have the time, it is fun to leave the leaves (snicker again) whole, dressing only the tips so they can be picked up and eaten with the fingers. I will tend to trim the romaine drastically; I like to seem mostly pale, yellow-green leaves in the salad bowl.

I prefer a mayonaise-style dressing. Yes, this is a departure from Cardini's coddled egg-and-oil melange. But I think it makes a better dressing. It serves to bring the various flavors in the dressing together into a smoother, more homogenous mass that coats the leaves evenly and flavors each bite of the salad. I use the traditional oil, lemon, garlic, and cheese (although I'm not a Parmigiano-Reggiano purist). Worcestershire sauce, as far as I can tell, has the weird power of making any and everything it touches taste exactly the same--like Worcestershire sauce. I imagine, being an English invention, this was the idea. So I leave the Worcestershire untouched in it's little paper-wrapped bottle in the cupboard, where it has remained, untouch, for at least fifteen years.

I like the zing that strong Dijon mustard provides, and it helps with emulsification. Use a good, strong brand. I've used Edmud Fallot ever since I found out that this is what Thomas Keller puts on the table at Bouchon in Yountville, CA (and, I presume, Las Vegas, but I haven't eaten there.) This was more than just hero worship (worthy though the Great One is of a little genuflection). It was because I was stunned when I first smeared some of that golden goo on the perfect fries during my first visit to Bouchon. Fallot really is amazing stuff, and well worth hunting down (it is actually cheaper than Grey Poupon, and certainly not much more expensive than other brands.) But you can do well with Beaufor, Maille, or even the mysterious stuff from Roland, which is pretty damned good.

I also love (L-O-V-E) the taste of anchovies, so these make the cut in my recipe.

Let's linger on the anchovies for a moment. Here is a food with an undeserved bad rap. Anchovies are the best freaking things you can eat, as long as you get good ones, and you handle them correctly. When I first started cooking, I was a great fan of anchovy paste, assuming that it would add flavor while blending innocuously into whatever it was that I was cooking. After a while, though, I came to the conclusion that it was just glorified, stinky salt. Then I switched to cheap fillets in those little cans. Still stinky, still salty, these were just the chunky equivalent of paste. Enter good quality anchovies packed in oil. Here's were you start getting some bang for your buck. The fillets are small and hard to work with because they are slick with oil, but the add a nice, almost nutty flavor to your food. If you can find them, you can get oil-packed anchovies in little jars, packed with capers, chili flakes, or even truffles. All of these can add astonishing depth to a whole range of food, not the least of which is caesar dressing.

But if you're ready to commit to a serious anchovy habit, spring the $15 for a tin of salted Sicilian anchovies. When you open the can, you'll find a lattice of headed and gutted (barely) fish, packed in coarse salt. Drain away the mysterious fluid that you'll find in the tin and scrape off the top layer of salt to revel the first layer of fish. Take out as many as you need and rinse them under cold water. You can split the fillets with your thumbnail and then remove the spine. (Coleman Andrews has a recipe in his immortal Catalan Cuisine for deep fried anchovy spines, which I have no doubt is the best cocktail snack in creation. Too bad I can't eat that many caesars at one time, and the prospect of freezing spines in anticipation of having enough is too ridiculous to contemplate.) Once you get these fillets apart, you can use these as you would the canned variety, only they will take far better and give your dishes significantly more color.

Acid? Lemons are traditional. Regular lemons are good. Ones from your yard are better. Meyers add a fruity sweetness that can be welcome sometimes. I've used limes to advantage when the rest of the meal was leaning Asian or Mexican. Red wine or Champagne vinegar can work, too, and is sometimes nicer when you want a more austere dressing.

Oil? I invariably use Turkish or Spanish extra virgin, the kind from the enormous vat that I buy when it's cheap. Yes, you can use your favorite, screamin' expensive boutique oil--it would be a fine way to enjoy the stuff. XVO will definately come through in the flavor profile of the dressing, so you should make sure to use an oil with an agreeable savor. You can also use a more neutral oil, if you like. I've made the dressing with sunflower or grapeseed oils, especially when I've needed to use the food processor, which can make extra virgin olive oil taste bitter. Now that you can get the stuff for next to nothing, you might even try whipping up a batch with the cut-rate white truffle oil you can get at Trader Joe's. It's actually pretty niffty stuff. I wouldn't recommend it to some someone who had never really MACKED on white truffle--I mean rolled in the stuff, smeared it all over his or her body and let the cats lick it off. I think you need to really get to really know real truffles before you flirt with truffle-ish things like cheap truffle oil. Otherwise you risk forming an opinion about this most-acquired of tastes before it has had a chance to work its magic. But if you know what the real deal tastes and smells like (in the case of whites, a soul-stirring admixture of diesel fuel and--eh, there's no better way to say it--pussy), the remembrance of truffles past that the mass-market oil evokes can make for a memorable salad.

Like I mentioned a bit ago, I'm not a Parmigiano-Reggiano purist, although it is probably my favorite cheese on a caesar. You can try the Grana Padano or the Argentine copy of Regianno, which are both a little less expensive and a lot less exciting. Dry jack is a possibility, as is asiago. I've made do with Pecorino Romano, but it packs quite a wallup. No matter what you choose, you'll do yourself better by grating it fresh from a block. Why waste the money on pregrated cheese when the garden center can provide you with shredded bark at only a fraction of the cost?

One more thing: Make more than you think you'll need. Not that you can save leftovers; the mixture will turn to goo in an hour or less. But people really get into this stuff. Make less of whatever else, and let them go crazy on this most revered of the salad tribe.