I pick up the van tonight at 5, and need to have it back by 8am Saturday morning. We can move in tomorrow to the new place. I am NOT looking forward to getting the sofa through the doors, I remember how much of a pain it was last time!
On the bright side the new place is much nicer, split over three floors, with a bigger kitchen - hopefully it will give me the inspiration to start cooking decent food again. Hopefully we should be able to relax in the new place now until the house sells and we can buy something humongous!
So my fridge is bare - we really have hardly anything left, but I think I can muster the ingredients for a Ceasar salad.
A Ceasar salad has nothing to do with the famous Roman Emperor. Apparently it dates back to chef 'Ceasar Cardini' in the 1920's who was stuck in a busy service running out of ingredients, so he came up with the dish, tossing the salad at the table for a bit of flair. So basically he was trying to scam his customers.
The sauce is what 'makes' a Ceasar salad - lettuce and croutons in a bowl just isn't sexy!
If you want to make the dressing the right way you need to coddle an egg. If you can't be bothered you can get away with using mayonnaise instead.
I'll give you my coddled egg recipe, but if you want you can just substitute the egg for a tablespoon of mayonnaise instead.
Lettuce
I suppose you could use any lettuce but you want something that you can pick up with your hands if necessary, drowned in sauce and you can't do that with anything like a hothouse lettuce. Your best off with Cos, Romaine or Little Gem lettuce - firm lettuces which you can leave in big pieces. Cut your lettuce into credit card sized pieces and leave in the fridge to keep crisp. If your using little gems, cut off the very base of the lettuce and keep the leaves whole.
Croutons
I don't like fried croutons and seeing as I'm writing the recipe you aren't getting any. Toast two thick slices of white bread just shy of being burnt, then cut off the crusts and dice the toast into 'dice' sized pieces. Approximately one piece of bread per person
Bacon
I use two slices of streaky bacon, cooked till crispy, but if you haven't got that to hand you can substitute any porky product for some umami goodness. Parma Ham, Prosciutto, Pancetta, Bacon Bits, Salami, anything that you can either slice or dice and fry up. I only have salami at home at the moment, so that's what I'll be using diced into small chunks.
Dressing
The dressing owns the salad, so it's important to get this right.
What do you need?
A mixing bowl/hand blender/food processor. Optimum tool is a hand blender with the mini food processor attachment. A standard food processor is too big for the amount of dressing you make.
1 coddled egg (or a tablespoon of mayonnaise)*
Half a crushed garlic clove (remember garlic is a lot stronger raw)
Juice of a lemon
Few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce
Tablespoon of red or white vinegar
Teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1 Anchovy
Bit of Salt
Lots of crushed black pepper (I really like pepper)
*How do you coddle an egg??
Easy, just the same as boiling an egg except you only leave it in for a minute. It ends up about half raw, half cooked, and gives nice little bits of egg in the dressing.
Whiz the lot up till you have an emulsion (it's all one sauce)
Chicken
Ummmmmm, grill or pan fry two chicken breasts
Plating Up
Add the lettuce to a large bowl and drizzle over some dressing, then add the croutons. Plonk the chicken in the middle and either layer over the slices of streaky bacon, or sprinkle your porky pieces. Then add more dressing.
Shave loads of parmesan cheese over the top and eat
"What! Who said it was healthy!"
If I get around to making this tonight I will add a picture. How about a picture of some packing boxes in the meantime
