I don’t make my own Caesar salads very often.  I find the dressing to be a little intimidating to make-  but a classic Caesar goes so well with such a wide range of dishes, it seems like  I should get over it- so here goes.

Intimidating you ask?  Might not be the right word- may be more disturbing.

It’s not the raw egg yolk.

It’s not the lemon juice (even when I have a paper cut)

It’s definitely this that I have a hard time with:

The good news is, I can easily forget about it when it gets whirled up in an immersion blender.

Add Olive Oil and don’t think about the smelly canned fish that are chopped up inside.

I digress…

Moving on to the croutons.  This is also something I don’t make often.  I have some that I like at metropolitan market and they suit me just fine when I need a crouton fix- but why not try my own

Dice up some bread and toss with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, minced garlic…

Throw in the oven for about 14 minutes in my case-

They are a little soft, and tasty.  The first one I tasted had WAY too much garlic on it, bit it seemed to be a fluke.  The rest were quite nice.

So the dressing and the greens and cucumber get tossed together- I had some rotisserie chicken I threw in for good measure- and some left over watercress-

Lastly, topped with parmesan and croutons- no thought of smelly fish.

YUM.  The dressing was super good.  Will definitely make again- and question my own sense when I purchase dressing from the store.

It’s really the dressing that made the salad.  Croutons were good too- but I would have been satisfied with some quality store bought croutons (insert gasp here)

I do wish the dressing would save- we only used half- but I’m not sure with the egg yolk how long that is recommended.  No chances here…  garbage disposal.  May be someone can give me a definitive answer on that?

Yup- I see this salad in my future.