You might think the Caesar salad is just a mound of romaine and croutons. You might consider it something chefs throw onto menu after menu just to appease the calorie-conscious diner. Oh, but there’s so much more to this ubiquitous side dish.
You see, the Caesar salad is at the center of a long-simmering controversy. To prepare it, a chef must take sides. To order it, a restaurant guest is preparing to celebrate or spend the rest of the meal grumbling “that’s just wrong.”
The chasm extends all the way back to the Caesar salad’s origins. Well, presumed origins, anyway.
If we accept the tale involving restaurant owner Caesar Cardini whipping together a hasty salad from leftovers for unexpected guests at his Tijuana establishment in 1924, it still leaves us with a divisive question.
Some say Cardini’s slap-dash recipe included romaine, croutons, garlic, olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, coddled eggs, lemon juice (possibly) and Worcestershire sauce. Others insist that first salad included anchovies, either blended into the dressing, draped over the lettuce or both.
Well, the folks at Blue Wing Saloon have a solution, a way to silence the bickering. Chef Mark Linback adds a little bit of fish to the dressing. He provides guests the option, however, of adding anchovies to the salad.
Either way, he considers the presentation a classic.
“It’s subtle,” he pointed out. “Anchovy is an acquired taste, but there’s nuance from it, the garlic and lemon , so you have a lot of components. It’s balanced — that’s why it works.”
Over the decades, Worcestershire has been nudged to the side by a dab of mustard in many recipes. Coddled eggs gave way to whisked egg yolks in most versions. Fresh squeezed lemon juice was added, if not already part of Cardini’s original. Yet this tweaking only added to the salad’s fan base. There is, indeed, a lot going on in this classic.
The olive oil and egg contribute richness and a flutter of herbaceous calm. Lemon brightens the roiling, oceanic smack from the mashed fillets. Garlic seems to unite all these characters while adding a bitter snip. With the tang of the cheese and bite of cracked black pepper — and perhaps a dash of Dijon mustard — the dressing gives voice to a plate of otherwise timid flavor of lettuce. With the snap of crisp romaine comes earth and sea, meadow and grove in one exotic chorus.
Yet it remains a simple plate of lettuce.
Linback believes one should add pepper for the added zing. As for the anchovy controversy, he’s dug in on one side, even though he offers guests the option.
“I prefer it in the dressing,” he said. “With anchovies a little goes a long way.”
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
