"caesar salad" news and stories

KitchenDaily expert Curtis Stone makes an extraordinary Caesar salad by carefully blending up its signature creamy dressing, adding toasted crisp Parmesan cheese, croutons and prosciutto and then topping his creation with a perfectly poached egg.

• 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.

Source

Between my vast cookbook collection, the over 100 food blogs that I read, and the wonderful recipe web sites that I use daily, I can find a recipe for just about anything. Anything, that is, except a dish that seems suitable for dinner. Why is it that I can easily find a recipe for chestnut-armagnac souffle (doesn't that sound good?), but not one thing that I feel like eating or cooking on a given night? I usually just end up falling back on old favorites, so I thought I'd share list some here, just in case anyone out there has the same problem as I do. Chances are that many of our default dishes overlap, but maybe if everyone shares some, we'll get some new dishes circulating...

1. Mario Batali's pollo al vino cotto -- The second tastiest chicken dish a person can prepare in a home kitchen (the first is chicken with figs from the Silver Palate Cookbook, but it takes some advance planning)

2. Chicken Caesar salad -- Healthy, plus it's easy to throw in other vegetables that you have laying around

3. Black bean soup -- I use my mom's recipe, but here's a really quick one from Epicurious

4. Roasted chicken -- Carrots, onion, potatoes, rosemary, thyme, lemon, salt, pepper.

5. Roasted vegetable chopped salad with reduced balsamic vinaigrette -- I roast any vegetables I can find at 400 for 30 minutes, then chop them up, toss them with chopped radicchio and chicken if available, and drizzle with a reduced balsamic dressing.

6. Soba noodle salad -- This is always easier than I think it's going to be, and just as refreshing. Here's a beautiful one from Simple Recipes to get you started

7. Lemon fish -- Any piece of any white fish doused in lemon juice, salt and pepper, usually accompanied by a baked potato

8. Sushi take-out -- If worst comes to worst, and I really can't bring myself to cook, this is my plan.

Now, your turn! Please share your default dinner menus!