Author: De Búrca Traditional Butcher Shop

Preserving Summer

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Elderflower1

Nothing reminds me more of summer than the heady scent of elderflowers. Elderflowers in our garden have been slow to bloom this year for obvious reasons but they are out in their full glory at the moment. I’ve been preserving that smell in jellies for the last few years so that I can smell summer on my toast on a cold November morning. I didn’t realise how much I would love jam and jelly making, especially when some of the ingredients comes from the hedgerows and the garden. There is nothing like having a cupboard full of your own various jars from different times of the year.

One very easy preserve to make is an apple jelly. This sweetly tart jelly is beautiful as an accompaniment to pork dishes. My own favourite is a plain crab apple jelly which I love with grilled chorizo off the barbeque. But I also use the following Bramley apple recipe as a base for the elderflower jelly as well as other jellies such as mint, rosemary or even chilli.

You will need a jelly bag or a DIY version of one, which is what I use because every year I find myself, yet again, without the real thing. I use a large colander lined with muslin as my substitute.

There are a few rules to jelly making.  If you are someone who can’t resist squeezing the juices out of the jelly bag, be prepared to get a cloudy jelly. I find if I let gravity work its magic overnight on the jelly bag, I always get a beautiful sparkling clear jelly. The only rules with picking elderflowers are to pick them on a warm dry day, never when it’s wet. Make sure the scent is good as trees differ. You will soon know a very well scented one and that will be your tree every year.  Make sure to pick heads on which there are flowers just beginning to open with plenty of buds that are still closed. And of course, remember to leave some on the tree for elderberry picking!

Bramley Apple and Elderflower Jelly

Makes 6-7lbs (about 3kg)

  • 2.4kg (5 ½ lb.) Bramley apples
  • 2.6 litres (4 ½ pints) water
  • 6-8 heads of elderflower (gently washed in water)
  • 2 unwaxed lemons
  • Sugar

What to do:

  1. Wash the apples and cut into rough chunks. Do not remove skin or core. Make sure to remove any bruised pieces. Put the apples into a large saucepan with the water and the thinly pared zest of the lemons. Add the elderflowers and push under the water.
  2. Cook for about 30 minutes till the apples are reduced to a pulp.
  3. Add the pulp to a scalded jelly bag (or your DIY muslin version) and allow all the liquid to drip through into the collecting container usually overnight.
  4. Measure the volume of the resulting liquid into a saucepan.
  5. To sterilise your jars: place clean glass jars into a moderate oven at 180⁰C/350⁰F/gas 4 for 10 minutes.
  6. For every 600ml of juice allow 450g of sugar. Heat the sugar in a low oven. This helps to dissolve the sugar quickly but is not a necessary step.
  7. Squeeze the lemons and strain the juice into the juice.
  8. Bring the juice to the boil and add the warm sugar. Turn down the heat and stir gently until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat again and boil for about 10 minutes without stirring. The jelly should reach setting point in this time.
  9. Skim off any scum that may have formed on the jelly using a slotted spoon.
  10. Test that the setting point has been reached by pouring a teaspoon of the jelly onto a very cold plate – I place one in the freezer. The jelly should crinkle on the cold surface.
  11. The jelly should be potted immediately into sterilised jars.

Elderflower2

 

 

Published in the Western People – 06th July 2014

Mutton dressed as lamb

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WP LambSalsaVerdePrep

Not being from a farming background and having been in contact with butcher shops that refer to lamb as lamb when it is actually hogget, I used to always wonder when a lamb became a hogget and indeed, when the Spring lamb season actually ended what with Easter being a movable feast. I have since learned that spring lamb is in season for a few weeks around Easter when the lamb is around 5 months old. It is known as lamb from then on until Christmas time after which it is called hogget. At two years old it is referred to as mutton.

As most sheep are grass-fed, Ireland produces the most excellent flavoured lamb. Mountain breeds tend to be leaner than some of the other lowland varieties, but living on different grasses, heather and wild plants gives mountain lamb a very distinctive flavour. Lamb from the hills of Connemara, Kerry, Donegal and Mayo’s own Achill Island has become sought after for this flavoursome distinction.

Hogget has a more pronounced flavour to lamb and I much prefer it. Mutton is stronger again in flavour and can be a bit tougher if not treated with care in the kitchen. Most people I have spoken to about mutton speak of a lasting impression left on their sense memory of the smell of it boiling in their mother’s kitchen as children. Undeterred by this, I have tried but have found it difficult to get mutton as I believe farmers can’t afford to keep the lambs this long for a relatively small number of interested people! But I will persevere.

The following recipe is incredibly easy and is good in the depths of winter as well as on the BBQ – which is just as well with the weather we’ve been having!

 

What you need:

  • 1 boned leg of lamb, or ½ leg of hogget, about 1.25kg weight
  • 1 small bunch of rosemary
  • 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled
  • 6 anchovies (about ½ 55g tin) – feel free to substitute black olives here, about 20 large ones
  • 2 red chillies
  • The zest of ½ a lemon
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

What to do:

  1. Ensure the meat has been left out of the fridge to come completely to room temperature before roasting. I usually leave it out for at least 1 hour.
  2. Heat the oven to 220⁰C/425⁰F/Gas Mark 7
  3. Strip the rosemary leaves off the twigs and set aside. Place the twigs in the bottom of the roasting tray, and place the opened out lamb on top. Your butcher can bone the leg for you. I usually keep the bone and add it to the tray for roasting if there is room.
  4. Put all the remaining ingredients, including the rosemary leaves, into a processor and blitz. Spread this paste over the lamb.
  5. Roast in the oven for 40 minutes, or until the lamb is still nicely pink inside. Set it aside to rest for at least 15 minutes before serving.
  6. Deglaze the roasting tin with 200ml of wine, stock or water to make simple delicious gravy.

First published in The Western People 22nd June 2015

A gallic inspired chocolate cake

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ChocolateFondantCake

“Every French home cook does a great chocolate cake” or so says Trish Deseine in her book ‘Nobody does it better’. The ‘Somebodies’ that the ‘nobodies’ do it better than are the French. I love France and the affair started with their wine and food long before I ever set foot in the place. As a result, when I started learning about cooking and searching for information, one of the first books I bought was Larousse Gastronomique, the culinary encyclopaedia.

When it was first published in 1938 it was written by French chef Prosper Montagné. It’s incarnations since have been written by scores of writers who form the Gastronomic Committee of the Librairie Larousse. It is an excellent reference for cooking techniques, history of food and important culinary individuals, ingredient information and not to mention recipes for pretty much anything you might like to cook.

In the beginning it was the book I went to for things like how to make a roux for a béchamel sauce, or indeed to find out what a roux was. These were things that I needed clear instruction on as I had never done home economics or had studied anything to do with cooking. I was starting completely from scratch in my own tiny kitchen in a flat in Dublin.  As Larousse Gastronomique was essentially based on classic continental cuisine, when looking for a good instruction I did move away from it slightly when I found the book Ballymaloe Cookery Course. This was much more accessible both because it was Irish and because Darina Allen’s instruction was so precise.

I still did love the French. And what could be better than a French cookbook written by an Irish woman living in France! I found myself then faced with Trish Deseine’s statement that every French home cook does a great chocolate cake. Far be it from me to let the side down so a few years ago I went through the arduous task of find our chocolate cake recipe. We went through everything from basic chocolate sponges with various fillings such as chocolate ganache or chocolate Chantilly cream to the princely Black Forest gateaux. Sean, being a complete chocolate addict, relished this quest. We went full circle and the cake that turned out to be our favourite was one of Trish Deseine’s French recipes!

It’s a chocolate fondant cake and so simple to make. The only drawback is that it should be made a day before it is needed so allow the chocolate flavour to fully develop. Also, for those of you who are wheat intolerant, it only has one tablespoon of flour in it. It’s not perfectly gluten free for coeliac sufferers but might be acceptable for the wheat intolerant chocolate addict in your house. It isn’t the prettiest chocolate cake in the world, but that taste….

Ingredients:

  • 200g good quality chocolate, minimum 65% cocoa
  • 1 tablespoon strong coffee, hot
  • 200g butter, softened
  • 200g castor sugar
  • 5 eggs
  • 1 heaped tablespoon plain flour

Method:

  • Preheat the oven to 180⁰C/350⁰F/gas mark 4.
  • Grease and flour a 25cm sandwich tin.
  • Place a mixing bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water.  Break the chocolate into it. Pour in the hot coffee and stir until the chocolate has melted.
  • Add the butter and let it melt into the chocolate.
  • Add the sugar into the mixture and stir very well.
  • Break the eggs into the mixture one at a time, stirring well after each addition. I use a balloon whisk for this. Finally, mix in the flour.
  • Pour the mixture into the sandwich tin and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. The cake should still be very moist in the centre. DO NOT be tempted to leave it in longer.
  • Remove from the oven and leave it to cool completely before turning it out. Wrap the cake in foil and try to resist it for at least a day. (Easier said than done).
  • Best devoured simply with good vanilla ice-cream.

‘Nobody does it better’ by Trish Deseine (Published by Kyle Cathie Ltd. – 2007)

 (Published in The Western People – 15 June 2015)

Grasping the Nettle

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Nettle Picking

‘Neantóg a dhóigh mé agus cupóg a leigheas mé’

I’m an asthmatic. I’ve had a runny nose most of the time for most of my life. I was given a natural remedy book by a good friend in college and discovered the benefits of Urtica dioica, more commonly known as nettles, in there. The plant, which was the bane of my young life running around the fields of Connemara, could, according to this new book, be the cure for my ever running nose. In particular in the spring time when I was most affected.

Stinging nettles love Ireland’s moist fertile soil and so grow all over the place. They should be picked in spring when they are young and tender. Trial and error has taught most of us that hand protection is required when picking them, but if you do get stung dock leaves shouldn’t be too far away to rub onto the affected area hence the old saying stated above. The alkaline secretions of the dock neutralises the acidic sting of the nettle.

Nettles are used as remedies due to their high iron and vitamin C content, not to mention histamine which is what helped to curb my rhinitis during the spring months. My grandmother used to say that nettles when taken in a tea in the month of May would purify the blood for the year. She wasn’t too far out because the minerals (formic acid, iron, potassium etc.) in nettles have been proven to reduce blood pressure, lower blood sugar and improve circulation thus purifying the system. And they are at their youngest and most tender in the month of May. Clever people our ancestors.

Before consuming nettles regularly, make sure to firstly check with your doctor if you are on medication, as nettles can interfere with certain pharmaceuticals. Also, make sure to always pick your nettles, or any wild plant for that matter, from an area that is not near any area that has been or potentially could have been treated with any sort of chemical. There is little point in the health benefits if you’re also consuming a nice dose of herbicide!

Nettles can be consumed in many recipes but I’ve only used them regularly in three. The first being the simplest: tea. Brew a bunch of tender stinging nettle tips in almost boiling water and drink daily (for the month of May, if following my grandmother’s tip!) Another recipe I sneak them into is champ. I simmer a bunch of chopped nettle leaves in milk for about 10 minutes before adding them to the mashed potato. Our favourite spring recipe for nettles though is nettle soup. I basically substitute nettles for leeks in a traditional leek and potato soup recipe.

Note: When picked, nettles should be used as soon as possible as they wilt quickly.

Serves 6 starter or 4 hearty supper portions

  • A knob of butter
  • 100g chopped onions
  • 160g peeled and chopped potatoes
  • 1 litre of chicken stock
  • 160g washed and chopped young nettles
  • 150ml whole milk
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper

Gently melt a knob of butter and a little oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over a low heat. When melted, add the chopped onions and potatoes. Cover and sweat very gently over a low heat for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are softening but not browned. Add the chicken stock and boil until the vegetables are cooked. Add the nettle leaves and simmer for a few minutes. Add the milk and liquidise. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

 

Published in The Western People 08th June 2015

Reek View Farm

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PatGrimes5

We lived in a mid-terraced townhouse in Nenagh for 7 years before we moved back home to Castlebar. It had a postage stamp sized back garden that was filled with dock leaves, thistles and piles of maintenance when we moved in. We wanted to grow some vegetables and herbs for the kitchen and soon realised the work involved even in a tiny garden. I distinctly remember discussing in amazement the people that grow vegetables for a living. After our own very limited and forgiving experiences in the garden, we will be forever in awe of people who do it every day. They are really up against it. If you get your produce grown in the first place, what with the war that has to be waged against weeds, slugs, aphids, blight, mice and other competitors, you’re still trying to compete in the market place with foreign supermarkets that are selling bags of carrots for 99cent; a product someone somewhere has paid the price for.

Westport native Pat Grimes was a builder when the recession hit. He started doing odd jobs for people as building work waned and found that he was leaning towards the gardening and planting jobs more than others. He grew up on Reek View Farm in Carramore on the Westport to Leenane road. His parents always grew a wide variety of vegetables for the table, but Pat’s recollection is only of weeding. He never in a million years thought he would end up growing vegetables himself and would have laughed at the suggestion. But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

After doing a short organic vegetable course in Mayo Abbey, Pat knew that he wanted to study planting more extensively and attended the Organic College in Dromcollagher, Co. Limerick. He had started developing his home place on Reek View Farm growing salads, vegetables and herbs. He grew everything at first to see what would sell and what people would be interested in. He also had to work out what he could grow and rotate on a farm that, while not certified organic yet, is based on an organic ethos utilising organic systems of pest control, rotation and composting. He started selling his mixed salad leaves, herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, parsley and coriander) and vegetables (for example: cauliflower, tomatoes, beetroot, courgettes, French beans, kale) to local restaurants and hotels. Sol Rio was his first client and the number has grown to include Sage, The Lodge at Ashford, Bar One, Seasons, Mill Times Hotel, Hotel Westport, The Pantry and Corkscrew and the Idle Wall, to name a few. He also supplies SuperValu and Centra in Westport and ourselves, De Búrca’s in Castlebar with his bags of Elia’s salad leaves. For his farmhouse eggs and any surplus vegetables he keeps an honesty box at the end of his farm lane – it seems a lot of people have making the spin out the Leenane road just for this.

Pat’s leaves were recommended to us last year when we did our first proper De Búrca event at the Banbh Market on Rushe Street. We absolutely loved them. Not just because they were so varied, fresh and delicious but because we were dealing with someone at the end of the phone that was so calm, where nothing was a problem or an obstacle – which is probably why he grows vegetables.  Despite having spoken to him twenty times on the phone I didn’t get to meet him until the day of the Market. He came to the stall with his wife Corey, a Californian who came as a volunteer to his farm two years previously and never left, and their little baby girl Elia in a sling. That was last year. Elia’s name is on his bag of greens in the shop now, and seeing as they are due their second baby this summer, I’m looking forward to see what else comes from Reek View Farm.

 

First published in The Western People 25th May 2015

PatGrimes6

PatGrimes7

Joint up thinking

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eyeoftheround2

A few years ago we had our first large family gathering at our house In Nenagh. There were family members and friends travelling from Mayo and Galway and we were cooking a meal to be served in a small marque in the very small back garden.  Just before we left the house to meet everyone at the ceremony, ‘he who shall not be named’ (as we live in a no-blame house) turned on the oven to start the roast. We were cooking a marinated loin of pork off the bone with rind on that was left directly onto the middle shelf of the oven, with a tray on the shelf below containing the roasting bones to make a delicious stock for gravy. We then headed off, happy in the knowledge that everything was cooking away in our absence.

We arrived back from the ceremony with gang in tow to find a crowd standing, looking at the house that was quickly filling with smoke with alarms blaring. We nervously opened the door to find that the house was not on fire but that ‘he who shall not be named’ had turned on the grill full blast instead of the oven so we had perfect crackling sitting on top of raw pork. The meal was eventually cooked but we were truly exhausted at the end of it. We decided that day that any gathering we were to cook for would be one of stress-free convenience. We usually go for cold cuts that can be roasted the day before with a variety of colourful different salads.  It works well.

A lot of people come into the shop at this time of communions and confirmations wondering about how to cook joints of meat for either serving warm or as cold cuts. Our favourite cold dish is beef served on sourdough bread with a dollop of homemade horseradish. The best joint of beef to use for large groups are roasts such as the eye of the round, topside or silverside because these joints are tidy to slice. But the one issue with these particular joints is that they are too lean. It is very important for roasting that there is enough fat on the meat to prevent it from drying out and to caramelise the surface. Fat is essential for the perfect roast.

Contrary to popular belief the fat found in well-reared grass-fed beef is good as a lot of it is a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, which is the same heart friendly fat that’s found in olive oil. Also, most of the saturated fat in beef actually acts to either lower LDL (or bad) cholesterol or by reducing your ratio of total cholesterol to HDL (or good) cholesterol. But if fat on beef is still not to your taste using it for roasting beef doesn’t mean that you have to eat it. At the end of the roast, solid fat can be cut off or liquid fat poured away. For joints such as the eye of the round, your butcher should provide you with some beef suet or pork flair fat to bard your joint with. Without this treatment, it will not roast well.

Once you have your cut of beef, barded if required, the next important requirement is the correct cooking time for how you like your beef. These cooking times apply to beef that has been allowed come to room temperature fully i.e. left out of the fridge for at least one hour or more, depending on size. I cook it uncovered in a suitably sized roasting tray seasoned with sea salt and black pepper.

    1. Preheat oven to 230⁰C or Gas Mark 8.
    2. Sizzle time: 20 minutes for up to 2kg; 30 minutes for 2 – 3kg; 40 minutes for over 3kg at 230⁰C.
    3. Reduce temperature to 160⁰C or gas mark 3.
    4. After initial sizzle time, cook times are:
    • For Medium (just ping in the middle) – 15 minutes per 500g or per 1lb
    • For Well done (not pink at all) – 20 minutes per 500g or per 1lb
    • For Rare (very pink in the middle) – 10 minutes per 500g or per 1lb

 

One Pot Wonders

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ThaiGreenCurryWiki

I love one pot dinners. I especially love one pot dinners that don’t take long, where you just fire everything into it and it’s ready as soon as you are finished adding the last ingredient. Most of our winter dinners are one pot wonders: stews, braises, casseroles, goulash and our favourite, curries. Although we eat curries all year around, a fresh fragrant spring alternative to the more wintery madras or tikka is a Thai green curry. Thankfully the girls love curry, although the kitchen looks like a bomb hit a paddy field after dinner if we have rice.  It’s worth it though. My daughter Elly is lactose intolerant and these curries are great because they use coconut milk and are dairy free.

Like any dish, a good curry needs good ingredients. I almost always use chicken thighs and drumsticks for any chicken dish that is made in a pot with sauce. Curry is no exception.  Always try and buy the best chicken you can. A proper pasture-reared chicken (like The Friendly Farmer’s from Athenry) will always go much further than a conventional chicken of the same weight. This is what I’ve found when cooking at home. The meat is denser in a free-range chicken and there is nothing but delicious cooking juices in the bottom of your roasting tin instead of that volume of suspicious looking clear liquid that you get with some conventional chickens. Of course, if you prefer chicken breast substitute these for the thighs.

Consider buying a whole chicken at your local butcher and getting them to take off the breasts for you and boning the thighs and drumsticks for a dish like chicken curry or a casserole. You can also add the carcase to the pot when making your casserole for stock and remove it at the end. To make the curry itself, I would steer clear of ready-made curry sauces. They are mostly disappointing. The only exception to this I find are Green Saffron ready-made sauces from Cork which include in the range a Korma that is really wonderful. What we generally use for Thai curries are good quality pastes. One good brand is Mae Ploy that’s available in most supermarkets.

The following recipe is for a curry that serves 4 and takes 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook. Not bad on a busy week night and the rice will be cooked in the 30 minutes. Perfect timing!

What you need:

  • 4 chicken thighs (or 4 chicken fillets)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2-3 tablespoons Thai curry paste
  • 1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk
  • 1 x 225g tin of bamboo shoots
  • 100g frozen peas
  • 2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
  • A few leave of fresh Thai sweet basil (or regular basil)
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

What to do:

  1. Remove the meat from the chicken thighs and cut into thin strips (or even better, get your butcher to do it for you!)
  2. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy bottomed saucepan. Add the curry paste and stir over a hot heat for one minute.
  3. Gradually add the coconut milk to the paste. It is important to do this slowly so that the paste and the coconut milk don’t separate. Then add the chicken strips to the saucepan.
  4. Drain the bamboo shoots and add to the pan followed by the frozen peas. Simmer for 10 minutes.
  5. Add the fish sauce, taste and adjust seasoning to your liking.
  6. Sprinkle the curry with sweet basil and serve with rice.

 

(This article was published in The Western People on 11th May 2015)

Quick Proof Bread

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Cáca baile

Many of life’s most intimate minute details can come flooding back at the sight or smell of particular foods. It happened to me recently when I baked some brown bread. I asked my Aunt Cáitín for the recipe Mamó used for her brown bread or cáca baile (bread for the home). It always looked very different to my mother’s brown bread and I remember as a child realising for the first time that baking could be a very individual expressive thing. And also at the time, very much a woman’s domain. Everyone’s brown bread, from my mother’s to Mamó’s, to the headmistress of my national school, to Cáitín’s  all tasted completely different despite the fact that they all contained basically the same ingredients. Baking from that moment on became a strange act of alchemy in the oven for me. I never quite knew what was going to come out.

I was never much good at baking sweet desserts. That was my sister Eileen’s area. Her strawberry pavlova Swiss roll is a work of art that gets savaged at every family get together. I stayed on the road of bread making and fell in love with flour and yeast experimentation. I’m not very good at that either but the recipe for proper white yeast bread could not be simpler: strong flour, salt, yeast and warm water. You can add extras like garlic and herbs but that is the basic recipe. Yeast is a living thing that can be kept alive in a starter dough for repeated use to make fresh bread, as long as you look after it and feed it. I heard about a French woman who had her starter dough for over 30 years.  Mine never lasted the week – a thriving half jar of bubbling goo in the fridge one day to dead as a dodo the next. I end up using dried yeast or if I can get it, some fresh yeast. The kids love making fresh dough and watching it grow and puncturing it with their fingers as it proofs. They love turning it into pizzas or garlic bread or just tasty, properly proofed white bread.

The other day as I made cáca baile using my grandmother’s recipe, I was transported back to when I was about six or seven to her back kitchen, standing at her elbow in front of the window with my sister at the other, watching her stir her cake with her wooden spoon. I can see it and smell it. I’m going to do my best to get her recipe as close as I can to the real thing. In the meantime…

Sourdough

Recipe for QUICK PROOF BREAD:

You will need:

  • 500g Strong White flour (or Strong Wholemeal flour)
  • 1 teaspoon Salt
  • 1 teaspoon Sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of Quick Yeast
  • 300ml Luke warm water (or use warm water if making wholemeal version)
  • 1 tablespoon Vegetable oil

Method:

  • Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
  • Mix in the water and bring together in a rough dough.
  • Add the oil and knead well for many minutes. If the dough is too sticky, add some flour as you go.
  • Cut and shape the dough into loaves and place in oiled tins or on a baking sheet.
  • Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size. This will probably take 40 to 45 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200⁰C/Fan assisted 180⁰C/400⁰F/Gas 6 with a tray of water in it.
  • Use a very sharp blade to score some slits in the top of the loaves and dust with flour to make an extra rustic crust.
  • When the dough is ready, bake in the oven for 25 to 45 minutes depending on the size of the loaf.

 

(First published in The Western People 05th May 2015)

Caesar the first.

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Cardini's Original Caesar dressing

The first Caesar Salad was made by an Italian immigrant, Caesar Cardini, in Tijuana Mexico in 1924. The young Italian entrepreneur had arrived from Italy to Mexico with his 3 brothers where he opened a restaurant (to avoid the restrictions of prohibition) while also opening another restaurant in Sacramento California. His daughter Rosa later told how her father invented the dish on the 4th of July having run low on stock. Cardini rolled his service cart into the centre of the restaurant and created the Caesar salad with the only ingredients he had to hand: Romaine lettuce, lemons, eggs, garlic oil, croutons and parmesan cheese. With the added dramatic flair of the table-side salad toss by the chef, a legend was born. Some members of Cardini’s staff have said that they themselves invented the dish, but it cannot be denied that it was Cardini that popularised it. The salad became the fad of Hollywood celebrities especially when he opened Caesar’s Hotel there. So much so, that Cardini and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1935 where he focused on producing and marketing his salad dressing. He trademarked it in 1948. When he died of a stroke in 1956 his salad was a household name but when his daughter took control, the ‘Cardini’s Original Caesar Dressing’ grew to be a staple in American homes. It’s pretty good out of the bottle but as is (almost) always the case, it’s better to make you own version of the dressing and the Caesar Salad.

When making dressings, even if I end up using another recipe, I always refer to Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course book for technique and reassurance. It’s the grandmother of books.  If you like to cook and if you don’t have this book, I suggest you get it. You will not find another cookery instruction book more concise and comprehensive. It taught me how to cook exactly and how to cook with instinct also. As a scientist, I love it because nothing is missing and everything is in the right order. Fool-proof! I include here Darina’s Caesar salad dressing recipe. For the actual Caesar Salad, like Cardini, use what you have. We often make it as described below, but adding leftover Sunday roast chicken. But remember to keep the crunch of the Cos (Romaine) with the lettuce that you use, and the saltiness of the parmesan.

This recipe serves 4

Salad ingredients:

1 large Cos (romaine) lettuce

2 slices of white bread cut into ½ inch cubes for croutons

50g (2oz) Parmesan cheese (or similar e.g. Grana Padano or Percorino) freshly and coarsely grated

 

Darina Allen’s Caesar Salad Dressing ingredients:

50g (2oz) tin anchovies

2 egg yolks

1 garlic clove, crushed

2 tablespoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed

A generous pinch of English mustard powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ – 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

½ -1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce

175ml (6fl oz) sunflower oil

50ml (2fl oz) extra-virgin olive oil

50ml (2fl oz) cold water

(Note: Any remaining dressing not used will keep covering in the fridge for several days)

 

What to do: 

Wash and dry the lettuce leaves.

Drain the anchovies and crush lightly with a fork. Put into a bowl with the egg yolks, garlic, lemon juice, mustard powder, salt, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces and whisk.

As you whisk, add the oils slowly until the emulsion forms and then you can add a little faster. Whisk in water to make a thinner consistency.

Taste the dressing and season to taste.

To make croutons: heat olive oil and butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the cubes of bread and fry till golden brown on all sides. Spread on kitchen paper to drain.

If you are watching the calories, you could just toast the bread and cube accordingly but you will get a guilt-free lack of real crunch.

To serve: put 1 tablespoon of dressing per person into a large bowl. Add the lettuce, about half the croutons and half the parmesan. Toss gently with your hands. Add more dressing if necessary to coat the leaves fully. Serve with a sprinkle of the remaining croutons and parmesan.

 

(This article appeared in The Western People – 27th April 2015)