AMERICA CANNOT get enough of the Caesar salad. In the last two decades, the simple combination of romaine lettuce, creamy dressing and Parmesan cheese has:
-Become America's most popular main-dish salad, showing up virtually everywhere from fast-food chains to white-tablecloth restaurants to the takeout counter in the supermarket.
-Dramatically altered the lettuce industry as the demand for romaine has skyrocketed.
-Turned the chicken-topped Caesar into the chicken item most frequently found on restaurant menus — more often than wings or even that perennial kid favorite, chicken fingers.
And still we want more.
Three-fourths of all full-service restaurants now offer a Caesar salad, compared with 57 percent just a year ago, according to a new survey of the country's top 500 restaurants by market research firm Technomic.
Dole Foods, which introduced the bagged Caesar salad kit 12 years ago, says sales of its classic Caesar kit continue to grow each year, despite competition from other companies and Dole's own eight other bagged salad kits.
"Americans just don't get tired of that flavor," says Eric Schwartz, president of Dole's fresh vegetable division.
Although the Caesar may seem like the all-American salad, it actually was invented in 1924 by an Italian immigrant in Mexico.
Caesar Cardini, owner of a popular Tijuana restaurant, concocted the salad one night for some late-partying Hollywood guests, most food historians agree. He used romaine, then considered an uncommon delicacy, and just six ingredients to make a creamy dressing: garlic, olive oil, lemon, egg, Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese.
The salad was prepared tableside, and posh restaurants in Los Angeles soon began offering it as well.
"The ingredients today don't impress us, but back then they were much more expensive and difficult to find. The Caesar, when it was first introduced, was considered exotic," says Vogue magazine food critic and author Jeffrey Steingarten.
As ingredients like olive oil and Parmesan cheese became more common, however, the Caesar made the jump from upper-class rarity to mass-culture staple.
Demand for the salad grew and the effect began to be felt in the lettuce industry. Over the past 15 years, romaine has gone from a tiny portion of the nation's lettuce crop to one of the fastest-growing vegetables to be produced, consumed and exported, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.
The Caesar also has proved a boon to the poultry industry, thanks to the idea of topping the salad with strips of chicken to turn it into an entree.
The popularity of the Caesar, particularly as an entree salad topped with chicken, beef or fish, is expected to keep on growing.
And it's not only popular in the United States. When Didier Armand, chef at the Paris La Defense hotel, was named Renaissance Hotels' chef of the year in 2005, he noted at a luncheon that no matter what he put on the hotel's lunch menu, "the chicken Caesar always outsells everything."
The Willard Room Caesar Salad
Recipe courtesy of the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, D.C., developed by maitre d' Francisco Nieto.
1 cup of 1-inch cubes of day-old white bread, crusts removed
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 or 5 whole black peppercorns
4 whole anchovy fillets, drained
1/2 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
1/2 teaspoon mashed garlic
1 egg yolk (see note)
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 dash hot pepper sauce, such as Tabasco
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 head romaine lettuce, cut or torn into small pieces and chilled
1/2 cup shaved Parmesan cheese
Set an oven rack 4 inches from the heating element and preheat the broiler. Place the bread cubes on a rimmed baking sheet and toast, turning occasionally, until golden brown, watching carefully so they don't burn. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Set croutons aside.
In a large wooden salad bowl, mash the peppercorns, anchovies, mustard and garlic. Add the egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce and hot pepper sauce, stirring to combine. Add the oil and vinegar and mix until creamy. Add the romaine lettuce and toss to coat, then add the croutons and toss. Distribute on individual plates and top with Parmesan cheese. Serve immediately.
NOTE: Scientists estimate that 1 in 10,000 fresh eggs may be contaminated with salmonella. Because of that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture advises that uncooked or undercooked eggs not be eaten by the very young, the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.
Chef2Chef News Desk