(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing Friday: if you stab it enough, it's a Caesar [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-12-13 I am silly enough to call out in Latin to the greeter dressed in centurion garb at the Las Vegas Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino. Our list, assembled from the suggestions of more than 60 chefs, recipe writers, historians, and culinary luminaries, serves as a pocket history of American home cooking over the past century. For me, a guy who loves trying new recipes but also has a tendency to screw them up—either because I miss a step, or because I cannot stop myself from “improving” upon them, in classic recipe-commenter fashion—cooking the list was a crash course not only in American cuisine but in American expectations of home cooks. Our list, assembled from the suggestions of more than 60 chefs, recipe writers, historians, and culinary luminaries, serves as a pocket history of American home cooking over the past century. For me, a guy who loves trying new recipes but also has a tendency to screw them up—either because I miss a step, or because I cannot stop myself from “improving” upon them, in classic recipe-commenter fashion—cooking the list was a crash course not only in American cuisine but in American expectations of home cooks. Take the Caesar Salad, which I prepared early in my monthlong experiment. Our best version of Caesar Cardini’s original 1924 recipe comes not from Cardini himself, who within a few years of the popular salad’s invention was protecting his intellectual property by bottling and marketing his own version. No, it comes from Julia Child, who remembered eating the Caesar in Cardini’s restaurant as a child. Decades later, Child called Cardini’s daughter on the phone and nailed down the recipe, which she delivers in ornate, comprehensive, entertaining Julia-ese in her 1975 book From Julia Child’s Kitchen. Not only is every step in assembling the ingredients carefully explained, she even tells you how to toss the salad: “Prepare to use large rather slow and dramatic gestures for everything you do, as though you were Caesar himself.” Child’s goal was to make sure not only that I did it correctly but that I did it in the proper spirit, which extends to the way Caesar, and Julia, suggest we eat the salad: with our hands, on huge, whole leaves of romaine. In our house, this was a messy, big hit. And tossing the salad in such a manner, a few grandiose flips after the addition of each ingredient, was very satisfying, although it led to a dressing that was significantly less emulsified than I would traditionally expect. Would this salad be just as good if you just mixed up the dressing first, and then poured it on the leaves? Yes. Arguably it would be better, because your children wouldn’t discover, halfway through eating the salad, big globs of raw egg. slate.com/... [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/13/2290628/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-Friday-if-you-stab-it-enough-it-s-a-Caesar?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/