As the summer heat drags on here in Northeast Texas, we find ourselves reaching more and more often for a cool salad topped with a tasty and chilled grilled protein.
My wife and I love a good Caesar, and have played around for years looking for a Homemade Caesar Dressing that tasted like a great Caesar should and yet didn’t require an advanced food science degree to pull off.
Thanks to several friends, including Chef Libby in Austin, we’ve settled on this amalgam of several good recipes, which is build around a cup of a healthy and tasty avocado oil (or good olive oil) mayo made right in our / your own kitchen.
If smashing anchovies and garlic into a paste with the back of a spoon doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, track down the very reasonable substitute anchovy paste, though we agree with the many traveling this road before us that the real thing packs a bit more funky, umami punch, and just tastes better.
Most recently we’ve been topping Caesars with either a Cajun-spiced grilled chicken or shrimp, though Judy’s salmon, grilled and chilled, is tough to beat too.
2-3 small garlic cloves, minced
1-2 small anchovies
1 cup freshly made avocado oil mayo
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 and 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp good Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp good salt (or to taste)
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
This one is a piece of cake to pull together.
Mash the minced garlic and anchovies into a smooth paste in a small mixing bowl; whisk in the next 6 ingredients until smooth and creamy. Stir in the freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (I’ll sometimes add a bit more) and adjust the salt and pepper to taste.
Stir into that masterpiece of a Caesar salad you’ve built and go to it.
Enjoy.
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