Caesar Salad

A couple of years ago I was at my friend's annual "Tamale Day" - which is like a national holiday in her family. Everyone has a job, sometimes that spans several days (soaking the husks), ultimately to prepare the pork, cheese, and chicken tamales for a hundred people. The final part of the day is huge feasting, ice cream making, and Petron drinking until the wee hours. Unfortunately I did not get there early enough to learn the intricacies of tamale making. BUT, I did learn about caesar salad. I was informed that Caesar Cardini was actually an Italian born Mexican who created the dressing on the fly. I also got the full "table side" presentation about how to make traditional caesar dressing - complete with wooden bowl, mashing the garlic and anchovies up its sides, and making a nice paste before adding the egg, and then olive oil.

I happened to have romaine lettuce, a chicken breast, and parmesan - so decided to give this whole raw egg dressing business a try. It seems that there are about 10 different "traditional" dressing recipes, but this one from epicurious seemed the closest to my lesson at tamale day. I actually did a bit simpler version (of several combined recipes) because I had no wooden bowl, or anchovy filets. In any case, the dressing was very tasty - kind of lemony and light, and not at all like the kind of caesar dressing you might buy.

My recipe (that would serve 2):
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 t. anchovy paste
salt and pepper
1/2 t. dijon mustard
1 t. worcestershire
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 egg
1/4 c. olive oil

Mix everything but the egg and oil into a paste with a fork. Whisk in the egg. Add olive oil in a stream and whisk steadily for a nice emulsion.

Tear up 2 smaller heads of romaine lettuce, toss with the dressing, and top with 1/2 cup of grated parmesan. And chicken, if you're into that. Usually croutons too, but I skipped that (though I do love homemade croutons).