Everything about Caesar Salad totally explained
A typical
Caesar salad comprises
romaine lettuce and
croutons dressed with
Parmesan cheese,
lemon juice,
olive oil,
egg,
Worcestershire sauce, and
black pepper originally prepared tableside.
Cesar Cardini (Italian-born Mexican) is credited with creating the salad. her father invented the dish when a
Fourth of July 1924 rush depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, successfully added the dramatic flair of the table-side tossing "by the chef".
Another story is that the salad was created for a group of
Hollywood stars after a long weekend party, and still another, that Cardini's brother Alex created it as "Aviator's salad" for a bunch of San Diego aviator comrades who were in a hurry, and the dish was renamed later, when Alex was a partner of his brother. A few fellows among Cardini's personnel also claimed the authorship, but without success.
As an historical addendum, the salad recipe was created at a place operated by Cardini on the ground floor of the
Hotel Comercial at the corner of
2nd Street and Main. In 1929-1930, Cardini moved his restaurant to the newly constructed
Hotel Caesar on Main St., nowadays
Avenida Revolución, near the corner of
5th St. The
Hotel Comercial is long-gone, but the historic "Comercial" building still stands at the same location, and the
Hotel Caesar's continues to operate to this day. The restaurant closed in 1993, but after a renovation in the late 1990's, the bar in the hotel began preparing table-side "ensalada Caesar per tradition" and claim to serve the "original Caesar salad".
Image:Kahn Building San Diego Hillcrest.jpg|The San Diego Kahn Building housed a Caesar's from 1923-1972.
Image:Hotel Caesar's Place, Tijuana, early 1920s.jpg|The probably earliest Caesar's Place in Tijuana, early 1920s
Image:Caesar's 'original' or 'hotel' restaurant - Tijuana c.1930.jpg|Original Caesar's restaurant - Tijuana c.1924
Image:Hotel Caesar, Tijuana Main Street, 1940s.jpg|Hotel Caesar on Main Street, 1940s-early 1950s
In today's Tijuana, only the
Caesar's Sports Bar and Grill, next door to Hotel Caesars, is closest to the historical ground zero of the salad. Until around 1993, the restaurant in
The Coronet Bar, and
Restaurant Caesar's Palace (both defunct), competed with the restaurant in
Hotel Caesars for the "best Caesar's Salad" in Tijuana.
Recipe
Contrary to popular belief, the original
Caesar's salad recipe (unlike Alex's
Aviator's salad) didn't contain pieces of
anchovy; the slight anchovy flavor comes from the
Worcestershire sauce. Cardini was opposed to using anchovies in his salad.
In the book
From Julia Child's Kitchen,
Julia Child describes how she ate a Caesar's salad at Cardini's restaurant when she was a child in 1920s, and some 50 years later she sought out and called Cardini's daughter, in order to discover the original recipe. In this recipe, the
lettuce is served whole on the plate, because it's meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers. It also calls for
coddled eggs and Italian
olive oil.
The Cardini family trademarked
the original recipe in 1948, and more than a dozen of bottled
Cardini's dressing varieties are available today. Many other bottled versions are sold, too. Some recipes include one or more of
mustard,
avocado,
tomato,
bacon bits, or
garlic cloves. Rochelle Low is credited with the creation of the "nouveau-Caesar" style by adding the hotly contested ingredient of
anchovies to the dressing recipe.
Cardini's Brand original Caesar dressing is somewhat different from Rosa's version
in order to serve today's customer's and manufacturer's needs.
Today, there are many variations. Many restaurants offer a more substantial salad by topping a Caesar salad with grilled
chicken,
steak,
salmon or
shrimp. Certain Mexican restaurants even improvise on items such as substituting
tortilla strips for croutons and
Cotija cheese for the Parmesan.
Ingredients
Ingredients according to the Hotel Caesar's recipe from about 2006:
Widely accepted, but unlikely to be original:
Raw egg and salmonella
Some people are concerned about the safety of Caesar salads due to the potential risk of infection by salmonella bacteria occasionally found in raw eggs. This is a concern with many similar dressings like mayonnaise, though generally the pH level is thought to be acidic enough to kill those bacteria. Nevertheless, later versions of the recipe call at least for briefly-cooked coddled eggs or pasteurized eggs. Today, many recipes even omit the egg and produce a "Caesar vinaigrette". Yogurt is sometimes substituted for the eggs to maintain a creamy texture. However, purists disdain these alternatives which don't use raw eggs, as "not being true Caesar's salads".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Caesar Salad'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://caesar_salad.totallyexplained.com">Caesar salad Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
