Caesar Salad

This post was written in 2013, when I was living in Edinburgh and first started thinking about a blog about reduced food items, and how to make them better.  I've only now decided to set this blog up, had more funds back then, and could afford things like balsamic vinegar and olive oil. But you only need to buy those once, and they make all the difference, as we'll see next week...

Dressed salad - £1.75, reduced  to  0.11p  From a certain firm that comes in blue and white stripes.

Let’s start with the basic salad, which comes with black pepper, croutons and a pea and mint dressing.  The leaves are a little tired and bitter to be honest and definitely need something to make them into an acceptable dinner.  The dressing is a little bland and sweet for my taste.  The less said about the croutons at this stage the better.   

 

Fortunately I have the making of a nice-ish Caesar on me:

-          Odds and ends of bacon, which I chop into cubes

-          Some very stale hard cheese, which has taken on an exceptional flavour.

-          A small bulb of chicory, which has seen better days, but is still good,  once the outer leaves are trimmed. 

I fry up the bacon on a high heat with about half a teaspoon of olive oil to get it going, and then slowly let it render down a little to release the fat.

While this is going on I mix 1 tbsp of every day olive oil with a splash of my super nice brand name extra virgin, and a splash of basic balsamic vinegar.  I add a bit of pepper and mix this about at the bottom of my salad bowl.  I drop the chicory, sliced up finely, into this.

 Now the bacon’s looking meaty and like it’s swimming in delicious lard, I turn the heat up and drop the croutons in and sprinkle liberally with ground black pepper.  

Once they’re nicely toasted and have soaked up the flavour, I layer some salad leaves on top of my dressing, grate some hard cheese, squirt the pea and mint baggy sauce onto the top and add another layer of leaves.  

Finally I drop in the bacon, croutons and pan juices and shred another fine dusting of cheese on top.  I give it a bit of a jumble, but not too much.  Get the flavours nicely layered, but not homogenised.

The effect and taste is rather good, if I say so myself for my first time writing about my creations.  The layering effect works really well, the sweetness of the peas and mint is balanced by the sharp balsamic hit at the bottom.  And the croutons at the bottom benefit from soaking up all that lovely dressing I made, as well as having a bit more punch with the pepper I added.  If I could change one thing, I’d probably back off on the balsamic a little, and definitely shred the salad leaves up into more bite-sized chunks, as they were a little big and tended to hog my forkfuls.  I’d also go easier on the bacon.

But all in all I've turned something that was destined to be refrigerator slime, into something, while not fit for Caesar, would satisfy one of his thriftier Praetors.