All hail, Caesar!

I had some chicken in the fridge on grocery day, so when I saw the romaine staring at me in the produce section today, I figured dinner was a done deal; Caesar salad with grilled lemon pepper chicken and portabella mushrooms. I also recalled that we had a fair bit of garlic left around, and knowing I would use much of what was at home was a good excuse to buy more (as if I ever need an excuse to buy more garlic). My only concern was the weather. I had to hope that the rain would stay away when grilling time came. It did, thankfully.


I haven't made a Caesar dressing in a while, and unless things are already prepped, it does take a bit of time to come together. That makes it more appropriate for a weekend than a weeknight in our house. But since the chicken breasts were rather thick, I figured I had ample time to work on the dressing anyway. I stuck to the basics; egg yolk, olive oil, garlic (lots of it - we love our garlic in our house), Parmesan cheese, anchovies (I know, some folks consider this inauthentic or unnecessary, but it is one of the places where I feel an anchovy has a culinary home), Worcestershire sauce, etc. I was glad that we had an extra lemon on hand, as fresh lemon juice always beats the bottle in a dressing. I think I was overly generous with the lemon juice in the dressing tonight, but only to the point of making the dressing a bit brighter than I usually care for.


The verdict


There is a certain kind of joy in a simple salad for a meal, and making the dressing from scratch, for me, makes all the difference. We had a bit of garlic bread - nice and crispy - with our salads tonight. The mushrooms were a good addition to the standard presentation. I suppose my thoughts on there being too much lemon might be because I used it on the chicken as well as in the dressing. Maybe a simpler or less citrus-y chicken preparation might do the trick next time. 


For some, this would have been a case of garlic overload. For us, it was just right. I appreciated the gesture my wife made, leaning her very pregnant self across the table to share a garlic-y kiss with me in appreciation of the effort.