Salade Niçoise

 

Salade Niçoise is one of the composed salads, in some ways a tuna version of Cobb Salad but much more complex—not surprising since it is French in origin, having first appeared in the city of Nice. Beyond that, no one seems to agree on much about the dish. One version I read is that originally it was simply anchovies, tomatoes, and olive oil. Auguste Escoffier, the famous chef who lived near Nice, added boiled green beans and potatoes, probably in the early nineteenth century. In the seventies the then-mayor of Nice, himself a cookbook author, decreed authoritatively that the salad should be mostly tomatoes; hard-boiled eggs and tuna were allowed but the green beans and potatoes had to go. Today’s Salade often incorporates all of the above.

Canned tuna is used in most recipes, but even then, controversy hovers. Julia Child insisted on canned tuna in olive oil; others prefer canned in water. And now there’s a new version in the field. Dining alone recently, I decided on Salade Niçoise since I had all the ingredients on hand. Only later did I find out that I had inadvertently prepared the latest version. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients – serves two

3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp. minced shallot

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 anchovies minced (or 1 tsp. anchovy paste)

¼ tsp. salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Whisk dressing ingredients together and set aside.

Six or eight grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise

¼ tsp. sugar

¼ tsp. salt

Eight or ten baby potatoes, either red or Yukon gold, the size of your thumb

A handful of green beans, ends snapped, cut in half if necessary.

3 hard-boiled eggs

1 5-6 oz. can tuna (I prefer water-packed chunk tuna—you want a really good tuna, like Tonino)

Niçoise olives and capers (optional, which means I omit them)

Toss the tomatoes with sugar and salt and let sit while you prepare the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until just tender, let cool a bit and then use a wooden spoon to smash each. Toss with olive oil and fry in skillet until crisp. Drain and cool. (This is a great way to make smashed potatoes for any kind of meal; you can roast in a hot oven instead of frying if you prefer—just be sure to toss in olive oil first.)

If you don’t want smashed potatoes in the salad, just toss the warm potatoes in a bit of the dressing before you put them on the plate. But smashing them was what I thought was such a great idea—and then I found it in an online cooking column.

Boil the green beans until just crisp-tender and cool in an ice bath.

Arrange the salad ingredients in two plates—I like to use soup plates for main dish salads. Drizzle dressing over ingredients and share extra dressing in a small pitcher.

An odd note: Julia Child fancied up her Salade Niçoise by twisting an anchovy on each egg half. Catches the eye.

And a digression: My oldest daughter always wants to know why people say tuna fish salad and not just tuna salad. Ever thought about it?

 

The simple pasta dish that tests even the best chefs

 

Cacio e pepe

Is past on your summer menu rotation? Sure, traditional Bolognese or lasagna  seems a bit heavy once warm weather arrives. But there are light pasta sauces that make a lovely summer supper, maybe accompanied by a green salad.

The simplest pasta dish of all is cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta). It has four ingredients: pasta, pepper, pecorino cheese, and pasta water. Today’s chefs sometimes use a mixture of parmesan and pecorino, because the pecorino is a strong cheese with a bold flavor. The parmesan softens it. So why is it so difficult that it’s considered the ultimate test of a chef’s skill? It takes talent—and practice and patience—to swirl those ingredients together until they form a smooth, velvet-like sauce that coats every strand of pasta. The starchy pasta water must combine smoothly with the cheeses—it is a slow process. The temperature, the swirl of the ingredients in the pan—both have to be just right. Get it wrong, and you’ll have pasta with clots of cheese.

The recipe is an old one. The usual story is that shepherds, off to spend long, lonely stretches with their herds, could take the ingredients with them because nothing would spoil. They could make cheese from the sheep milk.

Here’s what you do to make cacio e pepe for two:

6 oz. pasta

Tbsp. butter

Tsp freshly cracked pepper

¾ cup Parmesan

½ cup pecorino

Bring three quarts of water to boil, season with salt, and add 6 oz. pasta—spaghetti, fettucine, or other long, thin pasta. Stir it occasionally and remove from the water just before it gets to the al dente stage. Drain, but reserve a cup of pasta water (you probably won’t need it all)

In a separate large skillet melt a Tbsp. of butter and add a tsp. of freshly cracked black pepper. Cook over medium heat, swirling the pan, for just a minute. The pepper should start to toast. Add ¾ cup parmesan and swirl until cheese melts.

Add half the reserved pasta water to the skillet and let it simmer. Remove from heat and add one-half cup pecorino. Again, stir until cheese melts. Add pasta and stir until pasta is coated. Tongs are best at this point. Add more pasta water if needed. If you get it right, cacio e pepe is rich food for the gods.

What started as a peasants’ dish has gone upscale in some restaurants, served as an off-menu luxury items for VIPs, topped perhaps with shaved truffle, or served in a bowl carved from a wheel of pecorino. Italians are however fussy about the purity of the ingredients. Using cream in your cacio e pepe for instance will bring down the wrath of chefs throughout Rome.

Want a less challenging recipe? Here’s one I got from reading Cleo Coyle’s Village Coffee House mysteries—if you haven’t read those, I highly recommend them. Matteo is one of the main characters in the novel, the antagonist in the triangle at the center of the stories. (It’s complicated—read it and see!)

Cacio e Matteo

6 cloves garlic

½ c. olive oil

1.5 tsp salt

16 oz. spaghetti

1 c. Pecorino

1 tsp. coarse ground pepper

1 tsp Italian herb mix

Peel garlic cloves and mash just a bit; put them in a small pan and cover with olive oil. Heat until oil barely simmers. Cover pan and se aside.

Cook pasta, drain, and return to the pot. Immediately pour the warm oil over the pasta. Sprinkle with cheese, pepper, and herbs. Toss and serve immediately.

If you want to be fancy, serve in warmed bowls with crusty bread. A green salad is a nice accompaniment.

 

Some things just don’t need updating

 

 

 

          

Cottage pie
Photo by Mary Dulle

A day late but maybe not a dollar short: I usually do my cooking column on Thursdays, but all my attention was on my dog yesterday, so here’s the column I meant to write last night.

Scanning through the most recent copy of one of the few major cooking magazines left, I came across a recipe for Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie. Wrong, I thought! Absolutely terrifically wrong! Shepherd’s Pie is of British origin—there’s some disagreement among Shepherd’s Pie “scholars” about whether it came from Scotland or Ireland, but it was definitely the United Kingdom. And the dish calls up an image of a shepherd tending his flock, not a mental picture that translates easily to the Caribbean. Now I know much of that territory was once part of the far-flung British empire, but still.

Shepherd’s or Cottage Pie is a pretty basic dish—meat and vegetables in gravy, either surrounded by a crust or covered with mashed potatoes. Again “scholars disagree” about the names—some say Shepherd’s and “Cottage are interchangeable, but others insisted the meat in Shepherd’s Pie is lamb, the recipe originating in Ireland, and in Cottage Pie is beef and reflects either Scottish or British origins. According to one theory, the dish started in Scotland with a pastry crust but when the Irish fixed it, they added the potatoes, because they had aplenty. The vegetables traditionally are the root vegetables of winter—turnips, carrots, etc. In our country, most cooks use lighter vegetables—peas, carrots, corn, green beans.

So what distinguishes Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie? The Ingredients are pretty close to the usual, although there is a whopping 10 cloves of garlic and onions plus green onions. Breaking with tradition, though, the recipe calls for habanero chiles, ginger, tamari (a soy sauce made from miso paste), coriander, and thyme—to me, that’s a lot of discordant flavors in one dish. Plus the traditional ketchup. And the potatoes are whipped with coconut milk, which may be there for health reasons or may be an attempt to add another exotic ingredient. (You can tell I have a bit of bias working here.)

Others have tried to update what started as a homely dish, cozy comfort food on a winter’s night. Celebrity chefs from Tom Parker Bowles to Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse have published their versions of the pie. Parker Bowles (yes, he is Camila’s son and therefore the stepson of King Charles) adds red onion and olive oil, both of which might be all right, but then he shows his culinary snobbishness by adding Thai chilies. Yet another chef with aspirations to greatness adds more discordant spices—rosemary, thyme, and cinnamon—and three glasses of red wine, stirred in a half glass at a time (and this is supposed to be an easy dish). Some recipes call for cubed meat, others ground; Martha Stewart avoids that dilemma by just calling for two lbs. beef (on her website, cubed is called for but the direction is omitted in her early printed versions of the recipe).

So what’s the average cook to do? I say, keep it simple and omit the chilies. One expert I read also said, “Choose on herb, and us it liberally.” So here’s the recipe I have used for my family for years. They seem to like it.

Shepherd’s pie

1-1/2 lbs. red potatoes

¾ c. shredded sharp cheddar, divided use

1 lb. lean ground beef or ground lamb

2 Tbsp. flour

4 c. frozen mixed vegetables—your choice; I prefer corn, green beans, and sweet peas)

¾ c. beef broth

2 Tbsp. ketchup

¼ c. shredded sharp cheddar

Heat oven to 375^o.

           Boil potatoes and mash with cream and butter (use a dollop of sour cream if you wish. Stir ½ cup grated cheddar into hot potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Brown meat in skillet. Stir in flour and cook briefly. Add vegetables, ketchup, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in beef broth and simmer until mixture thickens.

Spoon into a deep-dish pie plate or an 8 incj square baking dish. Cover with mashed potatoes. Bake 20 minutes. Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup cheddar over the top and bake another 3-4 minutes, until cheese melts and casserole is bubbly. Serve six, but only if they’re not hearty eaters.

A green salad is really good with this.

The moral of this story is a thought I find myself increasingly repeating in this column and in my own cooking: not all traditional recipes need to be updated. Some of those recipes from the fifties and sixties are jut fine the way they are. Not necessarily, the “salad” with hot dogs in jelled pickle juice, but maybe the pot roast I do with onion soup mix or the tuna noodle casserole I learned as a teenager. Please let me know if those recipes interest you.

Here's to old-fashioned, home cooking—American food, with all its varied international origins.

 

A couple of old favorites—and a bit of history

 

Cottage pie
Idea and photo courtesy Mary Kleiner Dulle
the recipe is mine.

My dad loved his afternoon tea with milk, which is the British way. The tea had to be loose leaf, steeped in a proper pot, and preferably presented on a silver service. Tea was always accompanied with a small sweet, although I never saw a scone on the tea tray at home. Today, Dad’s tea has become ultra-fashionable: high tea is a late afternoon luxury, most often served in an upscale hotel. The menu, such as it is, usually consists of scones, fruit, dainty finger sandwiches filled with cucumber and cream cheese, smoked salmon, egg salad, chicken salad, pate, etc.—you can use your imagination. The sandwiches are often cut into fancy shapes and must be crustless. And several varieties of tea are offered.

One story is that as fashionable dinners were served later and later in the evening, ladies needed something to tide them over, lest they suffer a fainting spell from hunger. This light meal was just perfect.

But it was not always so. High tea was first served in seventeenth-century England, and it was a hearty meal for the working class when they got off duty. The menu would been hearty, such fare as stew, meat pies, cottage or shepherd’s pie, and Welsh rarebit.

Recently my neighbor Mary Dulle made a cottage pie and posted a picture on Facebook. It looked scrumptious and reminded me that I haven’t it for a long time. It’s one of those dishes, like meatloaf or tuna casserole, that is scorned by food snobs today, but my family and I love it. So I got out the recipe and have put the ingredients on my next shopping list. One note: cottage pie is made with ground beef; shepherd’s pie is the same dish made with ground lamb. Otherwise, there is no difference.

Cottage pie

Ingredients

Mashed potatoes, made of about 1⅓ lbs. red potatoes (you don’t have to skin them first, though some people prefer that.

½ cup shredded sharp cheddar

Milk, cream, or sour cream – as much as needed to make stiff potatoes

1 lb. lean ground beef

2 Tbsp. flour

4 c. frozen mixed vegetables (I prefer corn, green beans, and sweet peas but packaged mixed vegetables with carrots and lima beans work fine)

¾ c. beef broth

2 Tbsp. ketchup

¼ c. shredded sharp cheddar

Heat oven to 375°.

           Cook potatoes. You might add a cut clove of garlic or two to the boiling water to flavor the potatoes. Instead of milk, trying using cream or even sour cream for added richness. Stir half cup cheese in until melted. Set mashed potatoes aside.

Brown meat in nonstick skillet. Stir in flour and cook briefly. Add remaining ingredients and cook, stirring, for five minutes. Spoon into eight-inch square baking dish. Cover with mashed potatoes.

Bake 20 minutes. Sprinkle remaining cheddar over the top and bake another 3-4 minutes, until cheese melts and casserole is bubbly. Serve six, but only if they’re not hearty eaters.  

 

Welsh rarebit

Welsh rarebit (not, it’s not rabbit) is another overlooked dish today. The name “rarebit” comes from the Welsh caws pobi, which literally means rare (barely cooked) and bit (as in a small serving.) This meatless dish may come in small servings, but it is rich in flavor.

Ingredients

1½ cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated

2 Tbsp. beer

1 tsp. dried mustard

Pepper to taste

Melt cheese and beer in saucepan, add pepper and mustard. Most recipes call for serving it over buttered toast and running it under the broiler to brown it. My mom served it on saltine crackers, and I don’t recall that she broiled it. I have also seen a version—called Scotch woodcock, I think—that added tomatoes. It is a light supper, so much so that when I served it on crackers one night and Colin said, “This is dinner?” That was before he ate it. These days, I broil it and serve it on good, thick artisan bread. Great with a good green salad.

Enjoy high tea—one evening for supper.

 

 

Betty Crocker cooks Chicken Stroganoff

 

A Betty Crocker catalog from the 1970s

Yesterday about noon I asked Jordan what was for supper, and she said, “I’m working on it.” Off the top of my head, I volunteered to make Chicken Stroganoff which I thought was in one of the cookbooks I’ve published. Turns out it wasn’t. How hard could it be? We just had Hamburger Stroganoff, I had a deboned rotisserie chicken in the freezer, and it seemed to me the principle would be the same—just chicken and chicken broth instead of beef. To be sure, I went online where I found complicated recipes with long lines of ingredients. But I found one that was fairly quick and easy. And guess whose name was on it? Betty Crocker.

Betty is a hundred this year. General Mills, who owns the fictional character, intends to keep her around for another hundred years. The iconic baker first appeared in response to letters from home bakers who wanted cooking advice. When the Washburn Crosby Company (later reorganized as General Mills) ran a contest promoting Gold Medal Flour, they were overwhelmed with letters asking for help, so Betty was born. Her first name was chosen because it sounded friendly; the last name was in tribute to a retired board member named Crocker. In no time Betty was on radio with “Betty Crocker’s Cooking School of the Air.” Her cookbooks appeared, often the first cookbook a young girl was given when she left the nest. The first product to bear her name was a pea soup mix. In the Depression, Betty dispensed advice on stretching what food a housewife had. She was among the best-known women in America, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Today, she has her own web site, an entry in Wikipedia, and an online catalog. You can buy a Bett Crock mug, counter-top pizza maker, or any of countless cookbooks—even one titled Betty Crocker’s Lost Recipes which features vintage recipes. An online search turns up recipes from chili and Sloppy Joe to pineapple upside-down cake—remember when that was classic?  You can buy mixes for cakes, cookies, biscuits, muffins, and even casseroles. And what does this fictional character look like? There have been eight portraits over the years, but today she looks remarkably like she did a hundred years ago—your average American housewife, with straight brown hair framing her face and a slight, pleasant smile. Someone you’d ask for the best meatloaf recipe.

Here's her chicken Stroganoff, slightly adapted:

Chicken Stroganoff

¼ cup flour

1 tsp. paprika

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

4 Tbsp. butter (divided)

½ c. chopped onion

½ lb. baby button mushrooms, sliced

About two cups diced, cooked chicken

1-1/4 c. chicken broth

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire 

½ c. white wine   

1 cup sour cream

              Mix together flour, paprika, salt and pepper and set aside. Melt 2 Tbsp. butter in 12-inch skillet (or thereabouts) and sauté onion and mushroom until onions are translucent and mushrooms have released their liquid. Add remaining butter to skillet, add chicken, and let it brown slightly. Sprinkle flour mixture over skillet contents and stir to coat thoroughly. Gradually stir in broth, stirring constantly as mixture thickens. Stir in white wine. Simmer until serving time.

              When ready to serve, stir in one cup sour cream. Do not let mixture boil! Serve over egg noodles. We had shredded Brussel sprout with lemon as an accompaniment.                                                            

Sloppy Joe

In a previous life a long time ago, a friend gave me a cookbook titled, I think, With a Jug of Wine. The book is long since lost in down-sizing, and the only thing I saved is the recipe for Sloppy Joe. Okay, it isn’t called Sloppy Joe in the book. It’s called wine casserole. But the first time I made it, I thought, “This is Sloppy Joe.”

There are several theories about the origin of that sandwich, generally considered cheap restaurant or lunch counter fare. Some say it began with the loose meat sandwiches of the 1930s, thought to be a Maid-Rite invention, but another story is that the sandwich was developed in Sioux City, Iowa, by a cook named Joe. There’s even a suggestion the sandwich came from Cuba. In the 1940s, you could buy a Sloppy Joe sandwich for a dime, and in the 1960s big companies began to produce prepared ingredients. Remember canned Manwich?

I don’t care about the origin, but with cool weather approaching, I’m ready for a Sloppy Joe. It’s not real popular in my house, so I think I’ll just make a batch for myself. It’s something my kids grew up eating. Sometimes I’d serve it on toasted hamburger buns, but other times I’d just serve a bowl of it, like stew.

When my oldest daughter, then married a few years, called from Austin one night for the recipe, I sent it to her. She reported that Brandon, her husband, said, “It’s good, but it’s not Sloppy Joe.” Megan wrote, “I guess I’m the only one who grew up thinking red wine is an essential ingredient of Sloppy Joe.”

Note: this is a repeat. I’ve probably posted this several times, but it’s that good. And if you’re relatively knew to my posts, maybe it will be new to you. If not, maybe this will jog your memory that it’s Sloppy Joe weather. Here’s what I did:

Judy’s sloppy joe

1 lb. ground beef

1 15-oz. can of beans (any kind you want), rinsed and drained

½ c. chopped onion

½ c. diced celery

2 Tbsp. bacon drippings (If you can bring yourself to use it in this health-conscious age, use vegetable oil, but the bacon flavor really makes a difference; I keep a small jar of bacon drippings in my fridge.)

¼ c. ketchup

1½ Tbsp. Worcestershire

Dash of Tabasco

1 tsp. salt

⅛ tsp. pepper

¼ tsp. oregano

¼ c. dry red wine

1 Tbsp. A-1 sauce (If I don’t have this, omit it; I can never tell the difference.)

Cook onion and celery in bacon drippings. Add beef and brown. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 20 to 30 minutes. Serve in buns (there’s that loose meat connection) or in bowls. Good accompanied by chips and/or a green salad.

 

It’s chili weather!

 

When evenings start to get just a little cool my first thought is, “It’s chili weather!”

I was a northerner the first twenty-some years of my life, and chili as I knew it can from a can. I don’t think we even knew about Wolf brand, the Texas king of canned chilis. The great, late Frank Tolbert, chili-head extraordinaire and organizer of the first Tolbert Chili Cook-off which spawned cook-offs across the nation, even recommended Wolf Brand. There’s an entire book about the brand, and lots of stories, like the woman who took the slogan “Just heat and eat” literally and put an unopened can on the stove burner. When it exploded, the company paid for the restoration of her kitchen. Or the store in South Texas that stocked the chili with the dog food because the staff didn’t speak English and saw the wolf on the label. And every Texan can still hear those sonorous tones, “Neighbor, how long has it been since you had a big, thick, steaming bowl of Wolf Brand Chili?”

Wolf Brand wasn’t the only thing I learned when I did the research for a book titled Texas is Chili Country. There’s the history--Mexicans are disdainful of chili and adamant that it did not come from their country. In truth, the dish originated around the cousie’s campfire in cattle camps and on drives. The cook used what was handy—beef and herbs or spices found on the prairie. The tomatoes came later.

Along with the history, I found how many different dishes fell under the umbrella label of chili. Beans or no beans? Vegetables? Straightforward chili powder or an array of spices? Cubed steak? Ground beef? Vegan? Turkey or chicken? Venison makes a great pot of chili, although the girls in my family uniformly objected to the texture. You can make chili in various colors—verde, or green, or white with chicken or turkey.

A friend recently wrote me that years ago when she moved to Houston the second day she was there, a Texan shot a bartender because the latter had put beans in his chili. All I could reply was that Texans are particular about their chili. One of my neighbors is a chili purist and a goes to the mother of chili cook-offs at Terlingua every year. We had a mini-cook-off in my kitchen one night. His chili was pieces of beef floating in a spicy, thin red sauce. Mine, he said disparagingly, was a good meat-and-bean stew, but it was not chili. As a northern transplant, now of some fifty-five years, I admit my chili is mild and tentative, but it is hearty, easy, and soul-warming. For those who like beans and want their chili on the mild side, here’s what I did.

Judy’s Mild and Tentative Chili

1 lb. ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

Enough oil to sauté onion, garlic, and beef

1 8-oz. can tomato sauce

1 cup beer, or more if it gets too thick

4 tsp. chili powder or to taste

½ tsp. Tabasco

2 tsp. salt

2 c. canned beans, rinsed and drained

Brown onion and garlic; add hamburger and cook until all pink is gone.

Add everything else except beans and simmer for 60 to 90 minutes. Stir occasionally, and add more beer as needed (you’ve got that open warm beer anyway). Taste and add more chili powder as needed. Add beans and heat just before serving.

A word about beans: these days I prefer pinto beans, but I used to use Ranch brand, rinsing off the sauce. Some people like black beans, which work perfectly well.

Many people, Texans and otherwise, crumbly saltines into their chili. My family likes to top it with chopped purple onion and grated cheddar. Another new innovation: this fall I think I’ll pickle the onions. Just slice thinly, separate into rings, pack in a jar, and cover with a mixture of ½ vinegar (either cider or red wine) and ½ water. Let marinate in refrigerator at least overnight.

Sorry to be so commercial, but I can't resist adding a buy link. Read all about the history, the first ever chili cookoff, the later battle between festivals, and recipes galore. A fun book to research and write. Hope you find it fun to prowl through.

 

Amazon: Texas Is Chili Country: A Brief History with Recipes: Alter, Judy: 9780896729469: Amazon.com: Books

Caesar salad--an experiment and a recipe

 

Caesar Cardini, the chef behind Caesar salad

This is part of my ongoing campaign to vary our salad menu. To my delight, Jacob, who is gradually broadening his list of acceptable foods, loves Caesar salad. Discovered that one night when Megan and I took cousins Jacob and Ford to Pacific Table. So when I recently came across a new recipe that included toasted bread crumbs instead of croutons, I set it aside to try. Jordan doesn’t much like croutons, and I thought this would be a good substitution. Then I read it again. The dressing called for a whole can of anchovies—enough to turn Jacob off Caesar salad forever. I had already committed to making it for supper, so I decided to revert to a standby—the Caesar recipe from The Joy of Cooking.

Either I don’t know where my copy is or I lost it in the downsizing (that excuse is now five years old and wearing thin). But I couldn’t put my hands on the book. And it appears that the Rombauer family does not put their recipes online. As one family member explained it, they are a small business and can’t afford to share their intellectual property. But I did find someone who put their own adaptation of the Rombauer recipe online, and I went with that.

Sort of a major mistake. Jacob said it burned the roof of this mouth, and I admit it was what I could call a “stout” salad dressing; the next day it was really stout. I think the flavors intensified overnight. To me, the problem was too much lemon and vinegar. But here’s the recipe as I followed it.

½ c. olive oil

1 egg, coddled

1-1.5 tsp Kosher salt

½ tsp. black pepper

Half 2 oz. can anchovy filets, well drained on paper towels

1 tsp Dijon mustard

3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

3 drops (hard to achieve) Worcestershire sauce.

1 whole (small) lemon

Coddling an egg was a whole new experience. Back in the day I used a raw egg and didn’t think twice. To coddle one, you bring a cup of water to a boil (microwave or stove top) and remove from heat. Using a spoon, lower the egg into the water and let it sit five minutes. Once you remove it, with that spoon, it’s best to let it cool a bit. When you can handle it, crack the egg (carefully), spoon contents into other dressing ingredients, and give it a good whir in the food processor.

For the breadcrumbs that got me started on this, I sautéed 1 garlic clove in 3 Tbsp. butter until it softened. Then added 1 cup panko, stirring constantly because it goes from brown to burnt quickly. I let the crumbs cool and topped each serving of salad with crumbs and a generous sprinkle of Parmesan. I did not sprinkle with lemon zest which the original recipe called for.

Do you know the supposedly true history of Caesar salad? It is generally attributed to Caesar Cardini—and  you can still buy the Cardini brand of Caesar dressing in grocery stores--it is good but also a strong dressing. Caesar salad is not for the faint of appetite.

Cardini, Italian by birth, lived in San Diego but opened a hotel and restaurant in Tijuana during Prohibition to avoid the restrictions--and the law. One Fourth of July, the restaurant ran out of food. With limited ingredients, he added a dramatic twist to food service by tossing the salad at the table. To this day, Caesar salad should traditionally be tossed tableside, but it usually isn't. There have been other claims to the invention of this classic salad, principally by some of Cardini's employees, and there is the story of his brother's "aviator salad"--or did Caesar christen his salad "Aviator salad," and it came to be called Caesar in general use? History is once again not precise.

The original salad used lime juice, not lemon, and did not call for anchovies. That slight anchovy flavor supposedly came from Worcestershire sauce. Over time, as the salad became so popular, lemon juice took the place of lime, and anchovies were added--sometimes too many. Some recipes today call for anchovy paste rather than the fish. Another story is that original the romaine leaves were served whole, with a dab of dressing on the tip of each one. The dish was meant to be finger food, and I still eat it that way at Pacific Table in Fort Worth, where they serve a delicious Caesar on whole romaine leaves. But it's hard to reconcile the idea of finger food with the image of Caesar tossing the salad tableside.

You can find countless recipes online that are billed at the "original" Caesar Cardini recipe. Mostly they are variations of the above--some use vinegar, some use lemon, several use both. But basically it's lemon, olive oil, egg, and croutons. I'll stick with the Rombauer version but another time I’ll reduce the vinegar to 1 Tbsp., omit the Worcestershire and the mustard. Or eat my Caesar at Pacific Table. 

So there are some choices: modify the recipe to suit your taste, try Cardini's bottled dressing, or eat at Pacific Table.

Spam—more than you ever wanted to know

I did it! I bought a can of Spam. I’ve been wanting to try it again for some time. Bought a can a while back and ended up putting it in the church canned goods drive. But this time I ate it.

You see, Spam is a childhood memory for me, a good one. I was a kid during WWII and Spam appeared on our table frequently, although I think for breakfast and lunch but rarely if ever dinner. Introduced in 1937, this canned pork product was developed to meet the difficulty of getting fresh meat to servicemen, but it was also served in a lot of households. It was cheap, and it had a long shelf life.

The name? Spam is a Hormel Food, and the company won’t tell, claiming only a handful of executives know the secret. Best guess? It is an abbreviation of spiced ham. Monty Python adapted the name in a skit about unsolicited electronic messages—and it stuck. Hearing the word spam today, most people think first of the email term and not the food product.

Musubi

During WWII, military personnel joking called it mystery meat or meatloaf without basic training or ham that didn’t pass the physical. It was most frequently served in the Pacific theater and remains popular throughout the region, specifically in Hawaii where it is the basis for a treat known as musubi—marinated and fried slices placed on rice and wrapped with dried seaweed.  On Oahu, chefs compete with new and original recipes at an annual Spam Festival. In the Philippines, where it is a sought-after delicacy, Spam is often eaten with garlic fried rice and sunny-side-up eggs—a breakfast dish. Statistics show that the average person in Guam eats sixteen cans a year; it’s even sold at McDonald’s on that island. And surprise! It’s available in England, where they deep fry it or make hash with it for breakfast. Actually, in  2003 Spam was sold in forty-one countries and trademarked in over a hundred.

Spam hasn’t fared so well in this country. By the 1970s consumers were dismissing it because of the high fat content and its tendency to form gelatin during the cooking process. It is also high in cholesterol and sodium and is considered by many a poverty food. Probably more people eat it than you think—they may not all admit it. Spam is produced to this day in Austin, Minnesota, home of the Spam Museum and the National Spam Recipe Competition. (Austin, Texas has a tongue-in-cheek cookoff called Spamorama tied to April Fool’s Day.)

The Web site http://www.spam.com offers an array of flavors—turkey, pumpkin spice (everything is pumpkin spice this time of year!), lite, low sodium, bacon, hickory smoked, jalapeño, chorizo, black pepper, teriyaki, Portuguese sausage, garlic, and torcino (or Spanish bacon). You can

Spam fries

also find recipes on the Web site: mac and cheese, tacos, fried rice, Spam fries, hash, Spam with Ramen noodles, asparagus roll-ups, Spamburgers, a breakfast skillet, a sandwich special, a Hawaiian pizza (with pineapple), and katsu—a Japanese fried version served with mustard, cheese, pickle, and okonomiyaki sauce.

My mom didn’t go in for any such fancy recipes. She often took an unsliced can of Spam, scored it like a ham, topped it with brown sugar and cloves, and baked it. Alternatively, she fried slices.

So what about my taste test? I ate it sliced, at room temperature, and found the texture fine, the flavor vaguely like a mild ham. It was not gelatinous, but it was too salty.

Will I buy it again? Probably not. Would I be polite and eat it, if served to me in someone’s home? Of course. Would I eat it if desperately hungry? You bet!