Caesar Salad

Whenever we go out to eat at a fancy restaurant, Michael orders the Caesar salad. His absolute favorite was one that he ate at a restaurant in Vancouver, Canada called Seasons in the Park. Ahh, the memories of delicious meals eaten while we lived in Vancouver. However, we no longer live in Vancouver, and even when we did live there, we couldn't eat out at an upscale restaurant every night. So back in our Vancouver pre-children days, I got on a salad dressing kick and experimented with home-made Caesar salad dressing. I came up with a pretty good dressing that Michael and I both liked. Then we moved back to the US and had kids. For a couple of years I didn't have time to make salad dressings, and I completely forgot about the homemade Caesar dressing that we had liked.

This summer I had a craving for Caesar salad, so I went to our local supermarkets to try to find a bottle of dressing that did not have any corn syrup or soybean oil, and ideally not much distilled vinegar either, since that comes from corn. I was so excited when I found one brand that fit those criteria. Unfortunately, when we tried it out on our Romaine lettuce, it tasted terrible. Fortunately, I remembered where I had put my recipe for homemade Caesar salad dressing. The recipe needed some tweaking to make it egg-free, but after several tries I have come up with the following recipe, which gets Michael's stamp of approval.

The picture above shows Caesar salad with capers. Unfortunately, all store-bought jars of capers that I have come across so far seem to contain either vinegar, citric acid, or acetic acid, all of which come from corn. So although the capers are very tasty on Caesar salad, we don't add them too often. I used the capers to replace the anchovies that are traditionally in Caesar salad. We like the hint of anchovy flavor in our Caesar salad, but I don't usually use it for logistical reasons. The only brand of anchovy paste that I've found in stores near me contains corn oil, and buying a whole tin of anchovies to use 1/2 teaspoon seems like a waste. (We're not anchovy lovers, so you won't ever hear of us consuming the rest of the tin of anchovies for lunch. And we really don't want to attract all of the cats in the neighborhood by offering them the rest.)

Caesar Salad
serves 2 to 3 adults, or 2 adults and 2 small children as a side salad

Ingredients:

• 1 Romaine heart, rinsed and broken into bite-size pieces
• 1 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese. Use either 4C Grated Imported Parmesan cheese, or a block of Parmesan that you grate using the smallest holes on a grater or zester. 4C brand is the only pre-grated Parmesan I've found that does not contain an anti-caking agent, which comes from corn.
  
• 1 Tbsp. sour cream. Do not use low-fat. Use Daisy brand sour cream, or another brand that contains just cultured cream and nothing else.
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice. Use fresh lemon juice if possible, but bottled is okay.
  
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. granulated white sugar
• 1/4 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp. Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• optional: 1/2 tsp. minced anchovies or 1 Tbsp. capers
  

Instructions:

Wash the Romaine lettuce and rip with your hands into bite-size pieces. Dry the lettuce in a salad spinner or with a couple of towels, and place in a large salad bowl.

In a small bowl grate the Parmesan, or sift the 4C grated Parmesan through a sieve to break it up into very small pieces. Stir together the cheese, sour cream, lemon juice, black pepper, salt, sugar, garlic, and Dijon mustard. Then slowly whisk in the canola oil. If using anchovies or capers, stir them into the dressing.

Right before serving the salad, toss the Romaine lettuce with the dressing.