Monday, July 1, 2024

Monday Rerun: It's What's For Dinner When You Don't Feel Like Dinner

 In summertime, no one feels like preparing (let alone eating) a big heavy meal with gravy and potatoes and boiled carrots and all that. Toss together a nice green salad and call it dinner.

There's always the standard tossed salad with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, beets, celery, and so forth. Very popular and easy to toss together, although not as much with the grocery store salad bars being closed down 😢😠

We like that kind of salad and we like Caesar salads too, here at the Lazy "C" chuck wagon. You only need romaine lettuce, croutons, anchovies, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper.


The story is that a restaurant owner named Caesar Cardini was swamped with diners on July 4, 1924, at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. He decided to throw together whatever he could find, and do it tableside in a large wooden bowl, to add a dramatic flair to the dining experience.

I assure you, there will be 37 different versions of that story if you ask 37 different descendants of Caesar Cardini. Does it matter what happened in Mexico? You want dinner tonight. So toss the ingredients above in your large wooden bowl that you got as a gift all those years ago, and add this dressing:

 

INGREDIENTS

2 small garlic cloves, minced and mashed (make a paste by adding little salt)

1 tablespoon anchovy paste

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 cup bottled mayonnaise

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

black pepper

 

 

In a bowl, add the mashed and minced garlic paste. To this garlic paste, add the anchovy paste.

Mix both the pastes well together as their flavors merge.

Pour in the lemon juice and stir with a spoon to mix.

Shower on some pepper and then mix well. 

Pour in the Worcestershire sauce along with the Dijon mustard and drop in the cup of mayo. Last, mix in the cheese.

Stir with a large spoon.  The dressing should be thick! Plop some on the salad just before eating and mix it up real nicely. 

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