Caesar Salad is one of those classic dishes that has been over-tweaked, bastardised, and generally ruined by self-indulgent chefs over the years. The best Caesar Salad is the original Caesar Salad.
It was invented by Caesar Cardini in 1924. Cardini was a chef working at the Hotel Comerical in Tijuana- the Mexican town a few miles from the Californian border. During Prohibition, large parties of Americans used to cross the border in search of booze. The story goes that Cardini created the salad when a large party of hungry Americans turned up for the Fourth of July celebrations. He had run out of food, so made do with what he had left over.
Julia Child, the great food writer, apparently telephoned Cardini's daughter to get the authentic recipe- and came up with this. And who are we to argue with either of them?
First, you need two small heads of Romaine lettuce, preferably organic. Tear the lettuce into large shreds. Add two coddled eggs. Coddling is a technique where you only boil the eggs in their shell for one minute, so that you end up with a runny yolk. Add half a teaspoon of sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper; the juice of two lemons, ten drops of Lea & Perrins' Worcestershire Sauce, half a cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and half a cup of garlic oil. Garlic oil is just a good quality Virgin or Extra Virgin olive oil, infused by some garlic cloves for a day or so.
Toss the salad, so that the ingredients combine with the runny egg yolk, and lettuce leaves are well coated. Finish off the dish with some freshly prepared croutons. This is just deep-fried bread- cut into cubes. For some reason, slightly stale bread makes better croutons. You've probably noticed that I haven't added anchovies to my Caesar Salad. I have a strong hunch that the original recipe didn't include them, and I've tried to keep it authentic.
