Robert Nasser: Okay, now that we’ve got our basic mayonnaise set, now we start to add where the real flavor comes in. There is a lot of debate among cooks about how much anchovy paste or anchovies to add to a Caesar salad. There is as many variations on this, as there are cooks out there. Here is what you need to know. Worcestershire sauce, which we are also going to be using, does contain anchovies. So, it all depends, how much you like the taste of anchovies. If you really like a lot of anchovies, a strong anchovy taste, use a lot. If you don’t, you don’t really like anchovies, don’t skip using the Worcestershire sauce. But you can leave the anchovies out, although it really won’t be a true Caesar salad.
Speaking of anchovies, you do have a couple of choices. You can buy anchovy fillets, in these little cans at the store, or my personal favorite, you can just buy the paste in a tube. By using the paste in a tube, you don’t have to take a fork and mash the anchovy all over some cutting board. So, were going to go ahead and use the paste in this one. Although it really doesn’t make a difference, they are both going to taste the same.
For this amount of mayonnaise, and to my personal taste, I’m going to use again about a teaspoon of anchovy paste. I am just going to go ahead and squirt it right in there, and once I have got it, again, I continue to mix, make sure that that anchovy taste get spread all around in there. Once it’s incorporated, take a little bit and taste test. And, what you are also looking to taste here, is salt. If it doesn’t seem salty enough, now is the time to add a pinch of salt. If it is salty enough, then you are going to correct the salt all the way at the end, because you are going to be adding Parmesan, which has a lot of salt in it as well, as well as bacon. So again, this is just a preliminary salt taste at this point. Good enough.
Okay, next step. Add a dash or so of Worcestershire sauce; a dash or so of hot sauce. Incorporate it well. Notice how it keeps getting little bit more liquid as we adding liquid into it. Now, we are going to take one clove of garlic, peeled; smashed a little bit. I like to use this garlic peeler because it saves me a lot of time. All I’m going to do, is put that clove of garlic in there, and by pressing, I’m going to get all that good garlic goodness out. You can take a knife too to scrape away, and keep the good stuff in there. Once again you will notice, as we add each ingredient, we are mixing well so that the flavor gets distributed evenly.
Now, we come to the Parmesan cheese. For this amount of dressing, I’m going to use, I will say about a quarter cup of Parmesan cheese. Go for the good stuff folks, don’t skimp on this. Don’t get that stuff that’s in a plastic container, sitting on an aisle somewhere. Get yourself a little chunk of good Parmesan cheese, grate it up fine, and use that instead. It’s going to make a ton of difference, believe me.
So, like I said, about a quarter cup or so. Once again, mix in your flavors. And then, take some crumbled bacon. You can take some bacon and fry it up in the pan and then chop it up or you can buy the crumbled stuff, but make sure you get real bacon. Don’t dare use those bacon in a jar. You don’t want to do that. I would say I’ve got here about a half a cup of bacon. Now, if you don’t like pork, or you don’t like the taste of bacon, or maybe you have some sort of a religious objection to the use of bacon in your diet or pork in your diet, go ahead and skip the bacon. It’s not that important, but I like bacon, so I put it in there. Okay, now we’ve got your basic real Caesar salad dressing. For the next step, we are going to go ahead and put this all together.
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