"CaesarSalad" news and stories

• Torrisi Italian Specialties offers mild-mannered sandwiches by day, sexy eight-course dinners by night.
• It's time to give wine's redheaded stepchild, the rosé, some props.
• Watch out for Mark Bittman's leg of lamb -- it'll kick ya.
• Friends, Romans, countrymen: Lend me your salad fork.

Caesar Salad. Photo: stu_spivack, Flickr.

Veni, vidi, evicted.

Caesar's, the restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, credited with creating the now-mainstream Caesar salad, closed last week over a rent dispute.

"I showed up for work on Monday and I found all the furniture outside," Miguel Angel Ventura Oros, a waiter at the restaurant, told the Associated Press. "The manager told us there was an eviction for not paying the rent."

As far as I'm concerned, a Caesar salad is one of the best salads going. Don't get me wrong, I do love salads that are heaped with a number of different veggies and topped with a simple vinaigrette. However, those many-ingredient salads are a lot of work and don't lend themselves to a quick weeknight dinner in the same way that a basic Caesar does.

There's but one drawback to the classic Caesar and that is that the dressing contains raw eggs, a no-no for pregnant women, folks with suppressed immune systems and vegans. Happily, Divine Caroline recently posted a recipe for Vegan Caesar Salad Dressing with Meyer Lemon that sounds good enough to spoon straight from the mixing bowl (not that I would ever do something like that) as if it were soup.

If you can't find Meyer Lemons (although I'm still seeing them in my local market in the Philadelphia area), you can substitute regular lemon juice, sweetened with a bit of orange juice.

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Salad isn't exactly a traditional Thanksgiving dish. However, my mother always served it at our holiday meal. I think that she was convinced of the moral necessity of having at least one fresh vegetable on the table; either that, or she was worried that we were going to get scurvy and gout from gorging on turkey.

When I started making my own Thanksgiving dinner, I included this Caesar Salad. With the sharp tastes of fresh lemon and raw garlic, it provides a nice, palate-cutting counterpoint to the heavy, mellow flavors of roast poultry and potatoes.

3 large heads romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
9 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 1/2 Tablespoons light olive oil
4 1/2 Tablespoons water
4 1/2 Tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
12 anchovy fillets, drained and minced
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan (or Peccorino) cheese
2 cups croutons

Put romaine in a large bowl. Pour the remaining ingredients, except for the croutons, into a jar. Put the top on and shake until completely combined. Toss with lettuce. Right before serving, throw in the croutons and toss again.

When we think about food porn, the things that come to mind are decadent chocolate cakes, perfectly topped pizzas and sweet sorbets. But can salad be food porn? Of course it can, because food porn is about making the food look good and an array of fresh, colorful veggies almost always does. We saw a beautiful wedge salad once before, for example, but this Caesar Salad from Celia at English Patis deserves special attention. Not only is it simple and satisfying, but the homemade dressing topping it off is easy to make. It does not start off with eggs and oil, but uses mayonnaise as a base, so busy home chefs, as well as inexperienced ones, will always be able to whip up some caesar dressing before dinner.

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