The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Caesar Salad

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

In this episode, Deb and Kenji stop being polite and start getting real. Turns out, they weren’t born with encyclopedic knowledge of food; before each recording session, they consult…Wikipedia. (Stars, they’re just like us.)You may think of Caesar salad as the most ubiquitous of American salads. In fact, Caesar salad was invented in Mexico. However, it was invented by an American for Americans coming across the border to drink during Prohibition. Come to think of it, that may just be the most American thing ever. Also in this episode: the secret behind Worcestershire sauce and a hack for a quick Caesar dressing. Fax, no printer.

Hey, podcast listeners. I'm Chris Morocco, food director of Bon Appetit and Epicurious and host of the Dinner SOS podcast. Each week on the show, I help a listener get unstuck in the kitchen. And this summer, we're digging into feasts large. I kind of invited almost 30 people to stay with me for a week, and everyone said yes. And small. I haven't stopped dreaming about that pickle,

and I have never been able to recreate the experience. With help from food experts from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen and beyond, I'll give listeners the advice they need to find redemption in the kitchen. It wasn't necessarily the recipe I was looking for, but it is definitely the recipe I needed. Join us every week on Dinner SOS, and if you have your own dinner emergency, let us help. Email us at dinnersosatbonappetite.com. Happy cooking!

So, Deb. Kenji. Caesar salad. Yes. A properly made Caesar salad is like the salad equivalent of nachos. Oh, interesting. What do you think? I don't know. I'm not seeing it, but I love nachos energy, so I don't want to deny it.

A good Caesar, I feel like made with like whole romaine leaves that you pick up with your fingers and eat. It like, it has the eating experience of it is like nachos. A good Caesar, I feel like made with whole romaine leaves that you pick up with your fingers and eat. The eating experience of it is like nachos. And recently, at these outdoor parties I've been having, dinner parties I've been having, I've been making a lot of Caesar salads. But I've been serving it by just shoving a bowl down

while I'm cooking some other stuff and telling people to just dig into the bowl with their fingers, pick up the leaves, and eat them like nachos. I think it's the best way to eat a Caesar salad. I want it, but I also don't like eating with my hands that much. Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me? I'm no fun at all. I think it's just like this stuff gets under your fingernails and it's like really gross to me. Like my hand smells like garlic and anchovies later. Like that's horrible. Do you have a stink? Deb.

Deb, this is no fun. We're gonna have to rethink this entire relationship. So people eat the salad and then they touch other things? Yeah, but there's napkins. There's napkins, yeah. Whatever they're getting on their fingers from that Caesar salad, I guarantee they've had grosser things on their hands in their lifetime. But not while eating dinner, I hope.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times. Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and the author of three bestselling cookbooks. We've both been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades, and we've got the same basic goal,

to make recipes that work for you and make you excited to get in the kitchen. But we've got very different approaches, and on this show, we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes, comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week on the Recipe with Kenji and Deb, we're talking about... Caesar salad! That's next on the Recipe with Kenji, did you know that it's the 100th birthday of the Caesar salad? I did know that because I saw it on the Wikipedia entry for Caesar salad just before we started

recording this episode. Oh, do you read Wikipedia before we record? Because I do too. I like to sound really informed, but mostly I'm just reading stuff I read on the internet. I find it very interesting. I had no idea it was invented in Tijuana. Like I think I learned it when there was a wave of articles this summer about the 100th birthday

of the Caesar salad because it was invented in Tijuana in 1924, which doesn't feel a hundred years ago, but that just might be my like, Jenna X math. And it was at this Caesar's restaurant. And it was an Italian restaurant her name Cesar, no, it's Caesar, Cardini. I think you just call him Caesar, yeah. Okay, we're just gonna call this Caesar's restaurant, and it was an Italian restaurateur named Caesar Cardini. I think you just call him Caesar, yeah. Okay, we're just going to call him Caesar for the… It's spelled C-E-S-A-R.

Just audio, whatever. Yeah. I know. It sounds better. But I think they called the restaurant Caesars because they were specifically catering to an American English-speaking audience, and so they called the restaurant Caesars. And why were they catering to an American English-speaking audience? I think it was mainly because of prohibition and people going down to

Tijuana to drink. Tijuana was having a very big moment in those years of prohibition where people would come down there to party and to drink. And so they have this. And so these restaurants were really blowing up. And that was also why, uh, Cardini himself came down. He apparently was an Italian immigrant to the United States, but he came to Tijuana in 1920, just to pursue business opportunities around prohibition.

The Caesar salad, some people think that it was invented by Julius Caesar, but the Caesar salad, it's a relatively modern invention, and although it was invented in Mexico, it's sort of a very American salad because it was invented by an American, four Americans across the border in Mexico. So it's in the American culinary tradition,

like things that were actually invented in the US, like kind of whole cloth, sort of an American classic. That said, learning that he's an Italian immigrant, I feel like it makes so much sense because to me, the salad is very Italian. Like it has anchovies, it's Parmesan, it has olive oil in it, traditionally an olive oil too. And what I think of is like the reason why Caesar salad

is such a, Caesar dressing is so perfect, is I think of it like a template for so many other salad dressings. It's a balance of acidity and saltiness and a little bit of like funk and like, it's a balance of ingredients that you can apply other ingredients to and that's why it's like,

it's almost like a core recipe for a salad dressing. As far as vegetable based dishes go, as far as salads and stuff, it's like it's hugely just like a ton of umami packed ingredients in there more so than most other salads. Like a ranch dressing, which has like MSG in it and it has like tons of umami in it also. But that's why those dressings are so popular because they take what is a vegetable and

is generally light tasting and gives it like a real sort of backbone and depth. Like a Caesar salad. Brightens things. Yeah, it brightens things, but it also feels satisfying, right? You know, like you can eat a Caesar salad as a meal and it feels like it hits all those different flavor points and it really kind of is satisfying on a umami level,

it satisfies that need for savoriness. I also think the reason why we have so many like so-called bastardizations of Caesar salad is that the dressing just happens to taste good on so many things. Like I mentioned to you in the summer, I love to do an heirloom tomato Caesar. It's completely has nothing to do with the original, but it's a dressing that tastes

good on so many ingredients. In the winter, you're going to see roasted Brussels sprouts and stuff like that, but it's a dressing that tastes good on a little. It's like a cold bagna cotta almost, with the garlic and the... Yeah, it's just that kind of flavor that brightens so many vegetables. So it makes sense that you're going to see it around the world. But for the purpose of today's episode, we want to get into like the basic elements of it, where we vary what we like, what we don't like.

Apparently he first served his famous salad on July 4th, 1924, like intentionally aligned with Independence Day since he was serving so many Americans. I thought the story was that because it was 4th of July, there was a huge like rush of, there were a lot of people going down to Tijuana to drink and eat and the restaurant. The story I heard was that the restaurant ran out of food and it was one of those things like, oh, what can we make with these anchovies and romaine heads and parmesan that we happen to have you're not using for anything else. But it's one of those stories where it's like, oh, we ran out of ingredients and all we happened to have was all these things that happened to go perfectly well

together, which you are never quite believable. Somebody dropped the pie and we invented a whole new pie from it, it's so crazy. We just scraped it off the floor. That's like every food history story has like, you wouldn't believe that this waiter did in the kitchen. There've been some arguments about who actually created it, but that restaurant, Caesar's restaurant,

like someone in there created that, created the salad sometime in the 1920s, that's pretty safe to say. And printed recipes for it and references to it started appearing not right then, but within a couple decades after that. And it's wild to think that it's so ubiquitous now that it's gone from, I think it's gone from probably the biggest menu staple in the world.

Like maybe that and like spaghetti bolognese. But even like around the world I see it. But I feel like it's gone so far that it's gone full circle where when I go to a cool New York restaurant, I will often be like, this is the Caesar salad, but they're calling it like anchovy vinaigrette or this is our garlic lemon vinaigrette.

Where they almost are trying to get away from the fact that it's a Caesar salad because it sounds so basic once you can get these in packaged kits in the grocery store. You mean in the same way that like for a while restaurants would like would only call mayonnaise aioli because they didn't want to read mayonnaise?

Exactly, it's like the aioliification of Caesar salad. I know, I mean, I feel like Caesar salad these days has like a retro cool thing to it, especially if you're doing it. Like if I see a Caesar salad on a fancy restaurant menu I would order it just to see like what are they doing with this thing that I like some of the best salads I've ever had in my life have been Caesar salads If you ever go if you ever go to a beats of shawls in Portland excellent pizza But the Caesar salad there is like the thing on the menu that I'm like, you need to order the Caesar salad.

They do a whole leaf Caesar salad and they serve it in a big pile on the table and it's just got tons of really great Parmesan, really good anchovies. You eat it with your fingers and it's just like the perfect Caesar salad. I think of it as like a clam shell of chopped romaine with a little cup of dressing that you can buy at the to-go refrigerator at the airport, you know, like that's a Caesar salad or it's like something shoved into a wrap. And those are fine, right? It's like, whatever, if you have,

if you want to get like a, something you can eat on an airplane for 13 bucks, like that's fine. But a real Caesar salad is just like such a fundamentally different thing. When each ingredient is like treated well, and there aren't that many ingredients, so you can really, you know,

when you have leftover sourdough bread, or like good lettuce, it makes such a huge difference. So the elements of a Caesar salad, romaine lettuce, dressing, croutons, that's basically it. Maybe a little bonus parmesan. Bonus parmesan, bonus black pepper from your largest pepper mill. But those are the basic elements. So, yeah, let's go through those.

Let's talk about the dressing first. All right. So, anchovies are pretty standard. Pretty much every Caesar salad dressing you see these days is going to have fresh and cured anchovies. Although not in the original. Not in the original, they just use Worcestershire sauce. Now Worcestershire sauce has anchovies in it.

I was also reading that Worcestershire sauce a hundred years ago had a lot more anchovies in it and it was much more pungent. Which is why it might've swapped for anchovies better than the stuff we buy these days might. When I'm doing a true, a true Caesar dressing, like a good table side properly made to order one, I definitely use at least one or two fresh anchovies and I see recipes that use five anchovies, not fresh.

Yes, that's true. Yeah. The ones I get them in a jar, not a tin. A little black oil cure, like the salt cured ones packed in oil or the ones packed in salt, if you're going to want to be really fancy. I love those. God, they're so good. We can get into alternatives on everything, but I will use salted brine capers. the salt cured ones packed in oil or the ones packed in salt if you want to be really fancy. I love those. God, they're so good.

We can get into alternatives on everything, but I will use salted brined capers. Instead of anchovies? Sometimes I'll use it in addition just if I really wanted to pop more, especially if I'm not putting it just on a soft lettuce. But I actually think it's a great crop for vegetarians. So swapping capers out for anchovies, capers have a little bit too strong of a flavor for me, like a little bit too strong of a flavor for me, like a little bit too distinct of a flavor. But if you like, if you fry them first so they get like puffed and crispy and then you save some of them as garnish and

then put them blend the rest into the dressing, like that kind of mellows out their flavor and I find helps to blend in a lot better with the dressing. You just like fry them in olive oil till they kind of puff and pop like popcorn. Fried capers are one of my favorite salad toppings. They're so fun. All right. So that's anchovies. The fishy element. Yeah. All right, so that's anchovies. The fishy element, yeah, the Worcestershire, the anchovies. Then you've got the Worcestershire, which is,

again, we talked about how it used to be fishier, but actually in the original recipe, it was just Worcestershire sauce. Worcestershire sauce is not vegetarian. I probably didn't know that all the years that it's vegetarian, to be honest. Yeah, it has anchovies. I wasn't that, I wasn't gonna be that wrung out

by it personally. Getting to the egg element, the original recipe is a one minute coddled egg, which is like just cooked enough that it's not supposed to kill you. Right. It'll kill any sort of bacteria on the outside of the shell which can be useful because often things like salmonella for example are not inside the egg, they're on the exterior of the egg and the danger is that when you're breaking the egg, the exterior of the shell can touch the stuff coming out from the inside and contaminate it. So it will help in that sense,

but it doesn't cook the interior of the egg to any degree. So like if you're starting with clean eggs, coddling them for one minute is almost, there's not really any point to it. Like you're just breaking the raw egg into there is gonna get you the same basic effect. So let's quickly get to the other ingredients. So you got your anchovies, you have your eggs.

The other elements are basically your ingredients of a mayonnaise. So Dijon mustard, although the original recipe, which was apparently not in the original, but these days Dijon mustard, very common. You're going to have olive oil, right? Which is going to help the emulsion. And then you're going to have lemon juice or sometimes vinegar or sometimes lime juice. Those are the basic elements of a mayonnaise. Yeah. And then some garlic as well. Obviously salt, but I feel like black pepper has such an important role in Caesar dressing. Like you really want that feel like black pepper has such an important role in Caesar dressing. You really want that freshly ground black pepper.

It really makes a huge difference. I feel like lemon and pepper make a huge difference in it. A modern Caesar dressing, which often is going to be fully emulsified, like a thin mayo, a modern Caesar dressing is essentially just like a flavored mayo, right? It's like mayo flavored with anchovies, garlic, Parmesan, and Worcestershire sauce, right? And that's essentially it, which means that like, if you want to sort of cheat at Caesar dressing and make a real quick modern Caesar dressing,

all you have to do is take mayo and mix in a few of those ingredients, add a splash of Worcestershire, maybe some chopped anchovies, grate a garlic clove into there, and grate a bunch of Parmesan onto your salad, and you've made a Caesar dressing. Now it's a Caesar aioli, and you can charge more for it.

Yeah. But that said, the classic salad though, is not in fact an emulsified sort of mayo based salad. It's you basically take all those ingredients, and you form the emulsion as you're tossing the salad. All those ingredients just kind of go into a bowl, and the classic description is the one that Julia Child wrote about her experience going to

Caesar's when she was a child. She talked about seeing the whole table side preparation and watching how the whole leaves of romaine cascaded down and the eggs and the parmesan showered over them. The waiter splashed it with Worcestershire sauce. It's a very descriptive salad. It's rare that you have a salad that has like a story, like that feels like there's a presentation, right? Like the story, it comes to your table and there's like a, and they're adding these ingredients and then there's this big climax where the salad gets tossed right in front of you.

And she mentions this and I've seen this in the original too, that you, the leaves are individually dressed, which I think is so key because nobody likes a salad where things are unevenly mixed. And I feel like when you're using … Just like you don't like those nachos, the empty nachos, right? Where all the stuff is on one side. Exactly. Yeah, but I like the idea of kind of like, you know, as long as your hands are clean and

you're preparing food for people, you can swipe dressing lightly over all the big pieces of lettuce. It makes – it's just a perfectly dressed salad in a way that you're just gonna get pockets if you just toss it. So going through the ingredients. so you've got parmesan. I don't put it in the dressing. I just shower it on the salad and I like the way the parmesan kind of sticks to the lettuce with the dressing so it gets glued there. I don't really like cheese in dressings. I feel like it just kind of clogs there and makes it too thick.

It doesn't add a lot to me. If I'm making an emulsified dressing, certainly if I'm making like in a food processor, something like that, which I do sometimes like for a party or something, I want to make like a pint of Caesar dressing as a dip or something, like I would make it in a food processor. And in those cases, I would, I find the Parmesan actually really helps with the emulsion. Like it makes it much easier to thicken and to emulsify the oil without breaking. I can definitely see how the Parmesan makes it much thicker for sure. So you get like a real sort of mayo texture as opposed to like a horrible sort of more dressing like texture. So in that sense, I can see it. But I also like to add it to the bowl when I'm tossing, if I'm making it more the traditional way, I

like to toss it with some parmesan in there again, because I find it really helps with the emulsion and it helps kind of make sure that you don't end up with like bits of like raw egg or bits of like pools of greasy oil or anything like that. It kind of helps tie everything together. But then yes, I like to have like a giant shower of Parmesan over everything at the very end. But I think this came up before because I think I'm the same way where I have this bias against the cheese in the dressing.

So I think I like things separated. I want a little like pocket of taste from each. And I really like the taste of the Caesar base, especially when it's lemony and peppery and anchovy-y. Do you also like having loose anchovies on top of your salad? Absolutely not. Like I'm not into that at all.

No. I love it. I don't know why. Like I love the minced up with garlic and I don't wanna see them otherwise. I am all for double cheese, double anchovy. Are we going to fight? Great because we agreed so much last episode

that I don't want this show to get boring. We have to find something to fight about even if we have to invent it. I did a version of Caesar a couple of years ago, all photographed beautifully, sitting on my computer, where instead of doing Parmesan as parmesan, I did it as frico, like I kind of made those little crispy petals.

And I loved it because it becomes both the crouton element and the cheese element. It's not for everything, but it's just, I love that sort of like cheese potato chip. And I found that I didn't need croutons, which is nice if you're trying to do it like gluten-free or whatever, but croutons were in the original recipe, right?

Oh yeah, I saw that they were just tossed in a very heavy garlicky oil and toasted. Yeah. Oh, so that was the other thing. In the dressing itself, modern recipes call for olive oil. I think the original recipe was a garlic-infused oil. Yeah, I think so too. That both for the salad and for the dress and for the croutons. Yeah, so croutons, yeah, the original one is just garlic oil, crouton sauce and garlic oil, salt and pepper. And that's generally how I do it. If I have like garlic oil around, I might use that.

Although usually I'll just use olive oil, maybe a little sprinkle of like some fresh garlic or garlic powder I think works really well in croutons. I don't know if we've talked about this before, but for me like garlic powder and garlic are just kind of two separate ingredients that are- They're completely different flavor. It's like onion powder and onion.

They do different things in recipes. They do different things in recipes. They do different things, yeah. Garlic powder doesn't work as just like a substitute for garlic, but in certain applications, like it works as a different thing. And I think in croutons, it actually works really well. But I love if you've got like a nice country loaf or a sourdough loaf and you tore it to tear it in chunks.

I like a lot of olive oil. Like I don't think this is time to skimp. And then you toast it. And I think the ideal crouton is nice and dark on the outside, but has a little bit of tenderness inside. It shouldn't just be a jawbreaker. Especially if you have a nice, chewy country sourdough with a little bit of chew.

Crunch, but a tiny give in the middle. So the way I like my croutons is I do them, if I have that kind of bread, I will do them Nancy Silverton style. Instead of cutting them into cubes, you just tear it all by hand. So you get like kind of big chunks and little bits and some even like crumbs. And then you toast it all.

And so you get little edges that turn dark, but some like bigger chunks that are sort of softer in the middle. Do you toast in the oven or in a pan? I toast it in the toaster oven. Sometimes I'll do a Caesar, like maybe a kale Caesar where I'm tossing it with like toasted panko or something like that. In those cases, I might do it in a skillet on the stovetop. But what I really like is when you have croutons that are crunchy and then they do that thing where cereal slowly gets softer in milk and you get different experiences over the course of breakfast.

And so I like it when Caesar salads do that where you have the really crunchy croutons at the beginning that you can kind of pick off before you've tossed everything together. And then you have croutons that are kind of softening around the edges and have absorbed some dressing. And then at the end, there's croutons that you've saved that you just use to like kind of scrape up the extra bits of cheese and stuff. And those are like kind of the really saturated croutons that saturated enough that you can kind of like

jam your fork into them and they don't just like completely shatter and you can get your fork lodged into them. I think it's perfect. I also think you absolutely cannot have too many croutons, like especially if you're serving a party, because people will just keep dumping them into their bowl, especially when there's dressing left.

Yeah, my kids are pretty much in it for the croutons. I've done the, I call them crushed croutons, but it's basically like seasoned breadcrumbs. We'll talk about specific recipes, but I did that in a recipe in my second cookbook. And I love the effect of the crushed croutons, the seasoned breadcrumbs. So you use something panko, like something more coarse, but I love the effect of the crushed croutons, the seasoned breadcrumbs, to use something panko, like something more coarse.

I love that effect on the salad in the same way that I like the Parmesan added where it kind of clings to each leaf that's lightly dressed and it gives you that crunchy thing. And I feel like a, I don't know, a crusted leaf. That sounds terrible, Deb. Definitely not why I get paid the big bucks. I like crusty leaves. Yeah. All right. But it's like a nicely coated leaf where you have both the thin layer of the very flavorful

dressing and then you have that wonderful texture on top. And I don't think you get that with the whole croutons. The whole croutons are special in other ways, but you get it more with the crushed or the breadcrumb effect. That is why I like doing that sort of torn, that torn crouton feel. Sometimes I also like to do other crunchies. I might scatter it with some fried shallots so you get a little bit of crunchiness in there.

I did that last night. I did do the crispy shallots on top. I did not burn them this time, like the time I made yours. And it was really good. I never burn mine because I just buy them in a jar. I don't think they taste as good. God, I've ruined my life. I have my first time.

It would be so much easier. They don't taste the same. They don't taste as good, but they're much easier. Yeah, because they're so annoying. When we come back from our break, we're going to talk about lettuce and we're going to talk about great Caesars, including Kenji's and mine. So Deb, what's like the wildest, craziest Caesar variation you've made? I actually made a really weird Caesar last night.

It was a very specific craving I've been having and our conversations about Caesar salad sort of tipped it off. But I started thinking like, what if instead of using Dijon, I would use like miso and what if instead of using Worcestershire or anchovies, I would use fish sauce? And what if I use rice vinegar instead of lemon? Like this is nothing to do with Caesar anymore. But as I said earlier, I feel like it's the perfect formula for a dressing.

And that's why there's so many adaptations and so many, this dressing was amazing. I did some sesame oil and we put it on a Napa cabbage wedge with crispy shallots and some black and white sesame seeds. Does it have anything to do with the Caesar anymore? No, was it wildly delicious? And I can't wait for the leftovers tonight, yes. But that's one of the beautiful things

is that once you understand what sort of the elements are there for and what each one of them sort of brings to the table, then it makes it much easier to find a, kind of find substitutions for them, right? Like it makes perfect sense that you're putting miso in there and in a dressing that's packed with like anchovies and Parmesan and these umami ingredients, like it makes perfect sense that you're gonna, that miso would work in there, right? Or miso would miso in there. In a dressing that's packed with anchovies and parmesan and these umami ingredients, it makes perfect sense

that you're gonna, that miso would work in there, right? Or miso would work even in place. It was so good. And that one I was having fun loading up. I was like, you know, I put the shallots on and it's not quite a nacho. Like, I kinda wanna put some scallions, but I wanted to keep loading it up.

And I was thinking about dropping some radishes on, but I didn't have them. I used to go on this hunting trip every winter in Michigan. It was this tiny cabin out in the woods in Michigan, run on a propane tank, no real kitchen equipment to speak of, but the guy who owned it, my host, Joe, he would always ask me to make a Caesar salad.

And there was a year we just forgot to get the ingredients for it. And so we didn't have any, we had iceberg instead of romaine. We had the anchovies and the lemon juice and Parmesan. So we made the dressing reasonably well, but then I realized we didn't have anything to make croutons. All we had there was a big box of Cheez-Its.

Ooh. And so I crushed up a bunch of the Cheez-Its and like kind of whisked them into the dressing. And then we crushed up the Cheez-Its and tossed them over the salad and tossed it all together. And so each piece of lettuce got like a, of iceberg, got a little bit, a little dusting of like a crunchy neon cheddar Cheez-It.

I would be all for this. I love art and cheese. You would eat a cheeser salad. Of course you had a name for it. Yeah, I would definitely eat your cheese or a salad. We talked about how it's made with whole leaf romaine, which is interesting because it's usually these days chopped. Right, because you want to be able to eat it with a fork from a clamshell. Okay, but my thing is I love a fork and knife salad. Like that's why I love iceberg wedges so much. I like it because you can get each bite right. Even though it's usually served chopped, I usually find those pieces to be too big, and so I'm usually chopping them anyway.

I love it when it's just served the big pieces across, and then you can use your steak knife preferably to get the right size cut. You mean you can use your fingers preferably and your teeth to get the right size cut. Look at me trying to pretend fingers, preferably in your teeth to get the right size cut. Look at me trying to pretend I'm chill enough to wanna do them. I'm like, yeah, that's me. I love eating with my fingers. I love it when they're really like sticky and dirty

and later my hands smell like garlic and anchovies. Deb, can I tell you what we do at our house? What? Every other night is finger night. Like we have a rule at our house that the kids have to use utensils one night but on the off nights they get to use fingers. Really? Is that why my kids don't use utensils? Are, but on the off nights they get to use fingers. Really?

Is that why my kids don't use utensils? Are they playing the Kenchi game without me realizing? Maybe I gave them permission. Or are they just feral? But it wasn't, I never think of like a bib lettuce salad as like a fork and knife salad. I think it was just like folded in half on my plate and stick the fork through it and then just like open wide

and stick a whole leaf of lettuce in my mouth. But I was thinking last night, this would be a much more awkward salad to eat for someone with a small mouth. Like there are people whose mouths are like half the size of my mouth. And what do they do when they have a salad like this? That would be me.

Despite the sounds coming out of my mouth, I actually have a small mouth. So I feel like what I do is like with a fork and knife is I kind of do like a fold and spear. Like you fold it, then you spear it, and you fold it until it's like a little packet. I don't know if Baby Gem is baby romaine, or is it baby just like a different kind of lettuce,

like a green leaf, but it's so good for a Caesar salad because you have the right crunch proportion. You don't have any floppy dark green parts, which is my least favorite part of romaine. Romaine for Caesar, I find like you really need just the core. Like ideally I want just sort of the pale yellow leaves and just a hint of dark green on them, but then I really want the sort of the pale yellow leaves and just a hint of dark green on them, but I really want the sort of crispy, water-packed,

but still completely crunchy, the kind that are like little icicles. What you want is baby jam lettuce. That's exactly what it is. It's like the all-crunch romaine. Or romaine cores that have been really well soaked. Soak your lettuce. I feel like I say that in every, like,

soak your ingredients. The really great thing in a Caesar salad is when you have very cold, very crisp, almost juicy, fresh lettuce contrasted with the sharp, creamy dressing and all those crunchy things that you put on top. And to get that, you're going to have to soak your lettuce. And I do that even from the grocery store, no matter how crisp it is. You soak it in cold water, you refresh it, it comes back to life, it's more crisp, it has a more, when I say, yeah, it tastes juicy. It's because the lettuce is like, the cells are like, it's like a bunch of water balloons that are kind of glued together and as they sit in the supermarket, they are slowly leaking

out water and so that sheet of water balloons is kind of losing its structure and you want to pump them back up so that you, it's like inflating an air mat, like a water bed, right? You want to put enough water in there to make it fun. I was thinking that you were describing it with science and I was describing it like whiny children who needed to drink water. I'm like, we're thirsty. Yes, the lettuce absorbs water

and that makes it crunchier and juicier at the same time. So it's absorbing soaking. And when we're saying soaking, I put it, I like take my biggest metal bowl. I just put it in cold water. I might throw in a few ice cubes, but really cold tap water works too. And I just leave it there. It both washes the lettuce because any dirt will drop down and it refreshes it.

And I think you can do any kind of lettuce. I've done it for longer. You can leave it overnight in there. It's fine. I've left it there for an entire afternoon while I was prepping other things for a party. I have a really big salad spinner. So if I'm doing just like a single head of lettuce, I'll just do it all directly in the basket

of the salad spinner, and then, and I know we disagree on this also, that I am pro salad spinner, and you find that salad spinners don't get your lettuce dry enough. That is, it drives me crazy. Maybe I have issues. All right, so we got through all of the elements

and the history. I wanna hear about your new Caesar salad, your sloppy Caesar. Tell us about it. It's a salad I've been making kind of all summer because I've been having friends over like maybe once a week or so for a little dinner party and I've just been testing out this Caesar recipe and I find it kind of ideal for these summer dinner parties because it's really easy to put together.

There's minimal prep. The only prep you have to do is boil some eggs and everything else is done like on the spot like and I do it outdoors. I just put everything under a tray and bring it up and do it. So the way it started was I was coddling some eggs to make a classic Caesar, and I just forgot about them. So instead of cooking them for one or two minutes, I cooked them for four minutes. So they were these medium eggs that were still a little liquid, but a little bit fudgy.

So the first time I made it, I was like, okay, I wonder if this will still work. So I had these kind of jammy eggs having that texture of the chunky egg whites in there. So the next time I did it, I cooked my eggs a little bit less, just like three minutes. And I've experimented with it. Sometimes like what I like to do is I'll start a pot of steaming water or boiling water and I'll add eggs at one minute intervals,

like maybe four eggs and then just pull them out. So I have like a two minute egg, a three minute egg, up to like a six minute egg, something like that. So you get a mix of textures in there. And then everything else, it's like, I put it all in a bowl. The lettuce goes in a giant bowl. I break the eggs in. So you get a mix of textures in there. And then everything else, it's like I put it all in a bowl. The lettuce goes in a giant bowl. I break the eggs in there.

I have a jar of Dijon. I like take a spoon, I throw it on there. I have a ton of anchovies. So like I do like a dozen anchovy filets. Using like the whole can or the whole jar, right? I'm using the whole can. Yeah, right now I've been using a, like I got a big jar of like the really nice ones.

You know, the ones that still have their little bones in them and a little bit of skin on them. Do you have to take the bones out? I don't take the bones out. I just chop them up really fine. I'll take out the little details. I take out the tails and if there's any like little bits stuck on there, but I just chop up the bones for this. I put a ton of anchovies and I pretty roughly chop them, so you get like chunks of anchovies. I toss that on and then I drizzle it with olive oil. I put like a big shower of parmesan. I press a garlic clove through a microplane. It is essentially like a table-side Caesar,

but with like a lot of eggs that are kind of half cooked and a lot of anchovies that are kind of really roughly chopped. And then you toss that all together and people eat it with their fingers while you're grilling the asparagus or whatever else it is you're doing. And it disappears really fast.

So for a four-minute egg, it's definitely a runny yolk, which totally gives you that effect that you need for like a good emulsification. I like that because you get the chunky whites, but you don't get the… And you're going to love this. I find the best way to do it is you put all those ingredients in there. You leave the eggs till last, then you peel the eggs and you squeeze them through your fingers.

Do you do that thing they do on like on food shows where you very clearly wash your hands first so people can feel like at ease? I do not. No, I make them clear like this is a dirty experience. It's a hands-on experience. In my second book, I did a kale Caesar with broken eggs. It's such a title. And crushed croutons.

The crushed croutons are the seasoned bread crumbs. We talked about that. But the broken eggs, I think I did more of a six-minute egg, like a peeled, soft-boiled egg. No, I think it was more of a medium. I think they call them jammy eggs, but I've always called the medium cooked eggs. But yeah, same idea. I chopped it up and I also liked the way the looseness of the center yolk collected the crumbs and collected the parmesan. I feel like there's such a natural pairing. Exactly.

Yeah, and I what I find is like, you know, the best bites of this salad are when you have the Romaine is kind of a boat and you get like really nice chunks of egg white and then the yolk is coating it and you get like little bits of the croutons and little bits of everything else just adhered to it. Yeah, this is why I think of it is not true. It just feels like a bunch of toppings adhere to it like a crunchy vessel to get it into your mouth. And this is also why you need romaine hearts because the big leaves are too big. Like you would have to fold in the sides. They're too floppy, but you need to have something you can like fit. Would an endive Caesar be good?

I think it would be good. But I'm telling you baby gems, I'm sorry. They're like my favorite. They're my favorite crunchy lettuce. I should be sponsored by big baby gem. You know what would be good Deb? If you made like, if you took baby gem leaves, like the small leaves or like little endive leaves

and your Caesar, you basically just made like a real sort of loose, medium cooked egg sort of egg salad where it's like jammy eggs that are kind of roughly chopped with anchovies and maybe some capers and lemon juice and Parmesan and stuff and you just get like a cooked egg mayonnaise. A soft egg Caesar, like an egg salad that's a Caesar salad. Like the inside of a devil egg, but flavor, texture wise, but flavored with Caesar salad dressing. And you just serve that with like little,

like little gem, crunchy little gem for dipping in. Like as a dip, I think it'd be really good. Anytime you say little gem, I'm happy. I'm like, it's, actually I have a recipe way back in the Smitten Kitchen archives. It was from a book I was promoting for a Caesar salad deviled egg. And it has those ingredients.

It's got the Dijon, which you would have anyway. It has the anchovy and it's covered with those seasoned croutons and some Parmesan. So it's really perfect. The other thing that I did is at the time when I made that, when I accidentally overcooked the eggs, I couldn't find my Worcestershire sauce. And so I grabbed a bottle of fish sauce and said,

I really liked the way that works. Just like a little splash of fish sauce in place of the Worcestershire. And so I've kind of been doing that ever since. Fish sauce is made with anchovies anyway. You take anchovies, you salt them, you stick them in a barrel, and then you wait until they ferment

and squish the liquid out. Yep, that's basically it. It's delicious. The only thing you have to be careful about is getting everything too salty because you get the anchovies are salty, the Parmesan is salty, the fish sauce is salty. So you don't want to really make sure

if you're going gonna be adding additional salt that you're very careful about. Well, not all of us put an entire jar of anchovies in our dressing, can we? Well, that too is, yeah. Our loss, though. Let's talk about your recipe, or the one you sent me last week.

Your chicken Caesar, it's an old one on Smitten Kitchen. It's what you call your real bastardized dressing. And when you say bastardized, though, I'm looking at this and I'm like, well, that's not that bad. That's kind of what my Caesar dressing looks like. Like if you look at the Caesar dressing in like the food lab, that's basically the same ingredients,

like in different proportions. I just think that people love to like pipe up the comments and be like, this is not how Caesar dressing is made. Like, and I'm like, oh, I know. This is like an unapologetically inauthentic Caesar dressing, but it tastes so much better. And it's very much one of our house dressings Like my husband makes it all the time. We make a double or triple batch

We often maybe not every week of the month But at least one week out of every month or two We probably are working through a jar of it because it works really well and it keeps really well So basically what we're doing is instead of having egg, that's raw We're using mayo instead of using anchovies, we're using Worcestershire. Everything else is like fairly normal. So there's a little bit of mayo, and then there's lemon juice, olive oil, garlic,

Worcestershire, Dijon. So it's pretty normal from there. And then I feel like getting the lemon juice. And no Parmesan is the thing, right? There is Parmesan in the salad. Add it to the salad. I just don't glob the dressing with it. I just feel like the dressing is good.

I love the lemon pepper, anchovy, garlic thing. And I wanted to make it. You kind of shake it. Does it stay emulsified in your fridge? It does. It does. Once in a while, once in a while I have to re-whisk it, but it basically stays emulsified.

So it's like, I think that if you're somebody who has a real soft spot for like the packaged or bottled dressings, this is going to be like the better than homemade version of it. And you just make it like in a Mason jar and have it in your fridge and you can shake it up. Absolutely. It'll last like a week or two.

And if I make a batch of croutons, I might keep those at room temperature or crushed crumbs. And then, you know, if I wash a bunch of lettuce, then I have it in a big bag. It makes it very easy to prep for the week. And since I'm kind of going for a salad bar vibe with that, I actually go ahead and we don't always do it with the grilled chicken, but we might add some grilled chicken breasts to it. And it's actually a meal that my kids like so much

that when they came home from sleepaway camp this summer, that's what they asked me to make. I was like, what should I make guys? What are we making for dinner? And they were like, can you make Caesar salad? I was like, really? So I have that very inauthentic, like not, it's not try. I feel like I always have to like,

it's not trying to be authentic. We're not going for that. This is like really good. And I had never expected when I first put it on the site and like, I don't know, the dark ages, the internet, that it would become a household staple later when we had kids, that it was something I was going to pull out of the archives and make again and again, that this, because it's because the dressing keeps so well. That said, I do also make table sites. And I don't think I actually got to mention this, but Proust has his Madeleines and then you've got like the whole Ratatouille thing. But one of my absolute favorite, like most impressionable childhood food memories was this time that I think we were driving back from Florida. I don't know

if we were in Virginia or West Virginia, but we were staying at a fancy inn. I remember my parents were kind of grumpy about it because I think they'd wanted to stay at some place more budget and they couldn't get a room there. So it was like one of these, we're going to go down for dinner, but you guys have to be on your best behavior because this is a nice restaurant. Anyway, at the restaurant, they made a table-side Caesar and I had never seen this before. And my eyes must have been as big as flying softwares. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. before. And my eyes must've been as big as like flying softwares. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. They had the big wooden bowl.

He had the, I always called the lemon and the hairnet, like we have the half lemon. I had never seen that before, okay? I think he used a fork. I love fork whisk things, like instead of using fancy catching gadgets, like a whisk. So he whisked it all in the bottom of the bowl. He took the whole leaves of lettuce,

and then he used the whole leaves, and then they served it as they do. But I had never experienced it before. And I thought it was the coolest thing that could ever happen. And I keep waiting for table side Caesar's to become in again. And I hear about it here and there, but I don't see it much at restaurants. It feels like we're in this age where we're having these moments with retro dishes, where these like old school steaks are coming back and people want the classics again. Why are there no table side Caesar? So I decided I was going to start making it at home. And I thought my kids would be like, whoa. No, I literally had to rename the recipe table side Caesar for unimpressed clientele. That is literally what the document is called

because they are so underwhelmed. Like I can't even get them to look up when I do it. Like I was like the coolest food experience of my life. And my kids are like. Maybe you're not theatrical enough. Have you been wearing your tallest toque and using your largest pepper mill? And I don't have a lemon hair net.

So that might be part of it. So lemon hair net, a comically oversized pepper mill. These are kind of essential elements for a Caesar salad. Yes, like the ones that are like, they bring it to the table. You have to hold it over your shoulder, yeah. My dad would always say, you have to grind it until your arms are tired and then get the other guy to come over and do it. It was like his ultimate dad joke.

He would say it every time. We'd be like, dad. Yep. I asked them for their largest pepper mill every time. Does a large pepper mill really make different pepper than a small one? Anyway, so I've got table-side Caesar for unimpressed clients.

Deb, if you ever toss a Caesar for me, I will be impressed. Thank you. I think we should talk about Molly Baas' Caesar salad. It's hard to have a conversation about Caesar salad without bringing her up. She has a great recipe for a Caesar salad, but I also love with her passion for it, how

many people she got making real Caesar salad from scratch at home. She does it with the egg yolk. She does it with the anchovies. And I love a recipe with opinions, and it was full of opinions about how the lettuce should be cold and crunchy and how you can't cheap out on the black pepper. It's clearly her favorite food and you can feel that passion in the recipe. And it's a great recipe.

It's a really great, I feel like starter Caesar salad from scratch if you've never made it. Obviously we have our own, but like, it's just, it's really fun. And I loved how she got so many people making it. Are there any other great Caesars we're missing? I have one on my site from actually from Roberta's restaurant.

It has a whole head of roasted garlic in it. So it's obviously not that traditional. The Roberta's? Yeah. Roberta's the pizza place in Bed-Stuy. I think I was there one day with my son and he loved the salad so much that I like dug up the recipe, but it's basically everything you would have in a classic Caesar salad plus a head of roasted garlic. And I think it has some candied walnuts on it instead of croutons. But it's really good. It's like a nice little, it's different,

but it's a very good different. When Roberta's came around of that era when everybody was doing kale Caesar salads. Yes. Actually, I love a kale Caesar salad. I think I have a recipe in my book maybe, or it's certainly on Sirius. I think I saw one from you online.

But yeah, I use in the one in my book, my second cookbook, I have a kale Caesar. I think I'm using the baby kale leaves which are actually a lot like spinach leaves They're not as exciting, but I like it with the curly ones even shredded up. Mm-hmm or lasinato kale Lasinato which is a little more lettuce and you can rip it But I think both can be really good the key to kale is to do the oil and salt and like give it a little bit of a massage just to Kind of loosen it up before you dress it

I know you're supposed to but I never do because I feel like the dressing softens it But I'll dress it a little earlier that I would a softer lettuce if I know I'm gonna be making a kale salad I massage the kale with oil olive oil and salt and then I could just leave it in the fridge for a few days It's fine. Oh, it doesn't and it doesn't melt right? That's a good idea. Yeah, it doesn't yeah That's the whole point in fact. I think it it improves the texture. Like at my restaurant in California, my previous restaurant, it wasn't a Caesar, but it was like a creamy dressing that went on a kale salad. It wasn't a Caesar dressing.

It had like a creamy dressing on it, but what we did was we would take the kale, wash it, tear it by hand and then massage it with oil and salt and just leave it in that sort of marinating in that olive oil and salt up to a couple days and it improves. And then all you have to do is toss it with the dressing and it's like the perfect texture

for eating. That's what I find to be an advantage of kale salad is that you can pack it and make it ahead and it's totally fine. That reminds me, have you ever eaten at Barbudo in the West Village? Yeah, I love Barbudo. That, they have, so you've had their famous kale salad, which is like definitely, their roast chicken and the kale salad are like two of the most famous things. But their kale salad is, again, they don't call it a Caesar, but I have their cookbooks.

Of course I do and it uses, and they use the kale and then they use anchovy's garlic, egg yolk, Dijon mustard. Is there a stupid kale Caesar pun in the book somewhere? There is no kale Caesar pun in it. It's a very, it's a very, the book takes it so seriously. I think they put a little bit of red wine vinegar in it in addition to the lemon juice Actually, apparently I'm looking at the recipe apparently they put basil in it But I have never tasted basil in that salad before aside from that though

It's just very and they take the curly kale they cut it very fine So it's like this fluffy pile and they do the crushed crouton thing like they use not the crush But they do that they do seasoned breadcrumbs instead. So the crunch gets all mixed in. So it's a very crunchy kale salad. And I feel like that salad got people eating kale. He uses Pecorino cheese instead of Parmesan, which has more pop.

Pecorino, yeah, well, Pecorino, because it's a sheep's milk cheese. It has a little bit more of that funk to it, right, than Parmesan does. And it's a little saltier, so it holds up well. Maybe it holds up better to kale in a way that Parmesan, the gentleness of Parmesan goes nicely with Romaine. You were saying how you wanted Caesar salads,

like table-side Caesars, to become a thing again. I was like, Deb, you're in a position where you can will this into existence, right? But I might need, I need people around me to be impressed and not like. But I'm saying, well, Molly, if Molly can get people making Caesar salads, I think you can get people making table side Caesar.

I'll do a video, okay, and I'll see. For me, it helps a lot because like I, it helps with my social anxiety because like my tendency is if I'm hosting a dinner party, I'm gonna disappear into the kitchen. With table side things, like if you build the cooking into the activities, then you're forced to interact with your guests,

which is the point of a dinner party. I get anxiety in like social situations, so I feel like having a salad to toss while I'm talking to people is actually a good thing for me. I think that's fine. All right. So we're going to make it our mission this fall to bring back the table side Caesar. Mine will be for unimpressed clientele, yours will be for like some cool party, but whatever. Mine will be for socially anxious hosts. Alright, so our wrap up questions. Kenji, can you waffle a Caesar salad? Cause I hope not.

I cannot imagine a scenario where you'd want to waffle a Caesar salad. No, I'd say this one. No, it does not waffle. Could you taco a Caesar salad? Absolutely. A Caesar taco is essentially a Caesar wrap. And I think Caesar wraps are, they're a great thing. I feel like Caesar wraps are definitely like one of the goats of the Caesar salad world.

I remember there was a point like six months or a year ago where there were a bunch of TikTok food people like very into the Caesar salad wrap and they were trying to chase down the best ones. And they usually have chicken in them. So it's more of, it's definitely more of a lunch, dinner thing. I think of Caesar wraps as like a classic thing

in like the grab and go section of a ski lodge or an airport. Right. And besides what's a taco, like what's a wrap on a giant tortilla? But I could also see you doing like a grilled chicken taco with like a, with like some Caesar dressing drizzled on it and shredded or remain. I think that would be delicious also. All right.

So Caesar salad, you could definitely taco it. Can you fry it in butter in a pan? I don't even want to think about it. That's disgusting. I don't want any hot remain. Does it leftover? The elements keep. Dressing for sure.

But if you're going to dress it, it probably keeps better on something like kale than any other. Like if you want to have it already dressed, kale is the way to go. Also because the elements keep so well, just keep them separate. Even washed lettuce, I usually put it in a big Ziploc bag and I might throw like a damp paper towel on the bottom or something like that. I find that it keeps for days and days when you wash it yourself. I think our bonus wrap-up question was, does it come out of kids clothes easily? Yeah. Well, it depends how well it's emulsified. Well, I mean, are the kids eating it with their fingers? My husband and I had

this running joke that like, I hate sticky things things and he's like, but you had kids anyway That's it for today's Caesar salad episode, but we want to hear from you Is there a special little twist that you do on Caesar salad? Is there a unique ingredient you like to add? Tell us all about it You can tell us at the recipe podcast calm you can add us a Kenji and Deb or you can call and leave us a message at 202-709-7607. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions.

Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich, and Yori Lissardo is the director of network operations. Cher Delva, Apu Gotay, Emanuel Johnson, and Mike Russo handle our social media. See you next time on The Recipe with Deb and Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.