Choosing Ceasar salad ingredients can be a free-for-all

Susan Ohanian, Write Ingredients

Everyone is welcome to Monday Munch at the Charlotte Senior Center, prepared by wonderful teams of volunteer cooks. There is no charge, but a $5 donation is appreciated.

Monday Munch
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
The menu for Sept. 23 is Portuguese vegetable soup (potatoes, kielbasa, kidney beans and kale), Caesar salad, rolls and dessert.

Mark Bittman once noted, “You can add almost anything edible to greens and call it a salad.”

“Most salads are free-form bowls of whatever junk you have rotting in your crisper,” Judge John Hodgman of the comic court podcast has said, adding that the Caesar is a documented, modern salad, and from its beginnings is “defined by its ingredients.”

Photo by Silvia from Pixabay

He has a few words for anyone who adds cauliflower.

For cooking editors at The New York Times, Caesar ingredients seem pretty much of a free-for-all: grilled chicken, shrimp, bacon, cherry tomatoes, white beans, radicchio, umami, miso, pasta and on and on.

I read a few of the 273 “Community Notes” for vegetarian Caesar salad. One enthusiast advised that it’s so good you should make it and then “eat the whole thing yourself.”

Other readers offered this advice:

  • Use tahini paste and add 2 spoons of hummus.
  • Substitute pickle brine for caper juice.
  • Use sunflower seeds instead of cashews.
  • Several readers noted the terrible taste of nutritional yeast and advised skipping it.
  • One reader advised, “If you have a sou vide you can pasteurize your own eggs: 75 minutes at 135 degrees Fahrenheit.”
  • Another reader offered no pretensions: “I skipped a third of the ingredients, and it still tasted great!” No clue as to which third.
  • Finally, I read a comment that convinced me I need read no further for endless variations on this classic salad: “Calling this a Caesar salad is a reach, kinda like calling a chocolate martini a martini.” “Caesar salad” even appeared in a wedding section.

For the reception dinner, the bride and groom wanted to pay tribute to their mothers. Since the bride’s mother “made Caesar salad six out of the seven nights a week,” and the groom’s mother “had this affinity for onion dip,” the menu for the catered dinner included Caesar salad and chips with dip.

And yes, Virginia, Caesar salad has appeared in an obituary:

“Nicola Paone’s dialect-inflected songs about the joys, sorrows and insecurities of Italian immigrants sold millions of records and made him ‘the Italian Bing Crosby.’ He became a restauranteur, and his ‘salad show’ was an elaborate production that ended in a garlicky Caesar salad, accompanied by a 17-verse Caesar Salad song.”

Writing in The Irish Times, John McKenna offered the beginning lines:

“Put the salt and put the pepper and the vinegar just thus,

Put the oil and put the garlic, garlic is salubrious.

Lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, put the egg of yolk right in,

Use the mustard, leave the rest out, and you’re ready to begin.”

After 16 verses, the song ends:

“Caesar, Caesar,

Gonna gonna make it good

Gonna gonna make it right

Gonna gonna make it so

My love will love me more tonight.”

John McKenna offers the conclusion, “This is sexy food.”

I put Caesar salad in a search at The Wall Street Journal and was guided to an article on seaweed. I read it three times. Just seaweed.

Please note the subtitle of this Aug. 5 Washington Post celebration of Caesar salad:

“Happy 100th to Caesar salad, born in Mexico and celebrated worldwide. A delicious symbol of immigration, the Caesar salad has become a universal language, interpreted by chefs in countless ways.”

Someone commenting on this Washington Post article told a story about the legendary columnist Herb Caen (born in Sacramento but insisted he’d been conceived in San Francisco) who, in 1966, received a special Pulitzer for his “continuing contribution as a voice and a conscience of his city.”

Taking a bite of a Caesar salad in a pricey New York restaurant, Caen called the waiter over: “This is not a Caesar salad.”

The chef was called in, things escalated, and finally Caen asked for a phone and called Caesar Cardini on the West Coast.

“Caesar,” he said, “Will you please tell this oaf how to make a Caesar salad?”

He handed the phone to the chef.

There are no oafs among the volunteer cooks at the Charlotte Senior Center, so go forth and enjoy your Caesar salad and Portuguese vegetable soup.

As an epilogue, I can’t resist noting that another New York Times article featured this headline: “A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?”

It takes Sally the Salad Robot from 45 seconds to 6 minutes to make a salad. Certainly, it takes the volunteer cooks lots longer, but they’ll also offer a personal greeting along with good food.

The Sept. 30 menu for Monday Munch is chili dogs and hot dogs with toppings, corn and bean salad, tomato and cucumber salad and dessert

You’ll note I read a lot of newspapers. They offer info, challenge, humor, surprise and lots more. This is why I support The Charlotte News: I urge you to join me in donating to our community newspaper. at charlottenewsvt.org/donate.