How to Make Caesar Salad

Here’s a simple yet effective way to make a better than bottled Caesar Salad dressing at home in your food processor. Although his recipe is slightly different than my Caesar Salad recipe mostly because he doesn’t measure out any of the ingredients, the video shows you step-by-step how to make this classic salad dressing in your food processor or blender.

If you are interested in watching more recipes and cooking techniques, check out my cooking videos resource page. Here you can pick up some great tips and techniques to help become a better cook.

Insalata Caprese is the fancy gourmet name for tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, a dish I eat all summer long as soon as the fresh local tomatoes are ready.  Now I find out the Reluctant Gourmet is preparing them all wrong.

I was first told I was making them wrong by Connie Devlin, the mother of one of my wife’s close friends, Susan Devlin. Connie, of Italian descent,  possibly makes the best meatballs I’ve ever tasted. During a weekend visit to Susan’s home in New Jersey, we were preparing Insalata Caprese for a dinner party and I suggested adding a little aged balsamic vinegar.

Connie jumped all over me and said, “No vinegar. You don’t mix tomatoes and vinegar.”

“What, no aged balsamic vinegar!” I didn’t believe her for a minute and continued my balsamic vinegar ways and enjoyed every moment.

News to Me

So here I am on vacation in the beautiful oceanside community of Avalon, New Jersey reading a week old food section of The Philadelphia Inquirer and lo and behold I come across an article on Insalta Caprese.

And what do you think they say about making this classic summer treat? No vinegar. I am shocked, dismayed and still disbelieving so I read further.

Insalta caprese comes from the southern Italian island of Capri and according to tradition, the salad is made up of only five ingredients: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and salt. No vinegar. In fact, according to the article and in support of Connie Devlin, vinegar and tomatoes don’t work together.

Why?  Because Italians like their salad tomatoes firm, slightly green and tart rather than fully ripe and sweeter the way I prefer them.  To them, there is absolutely no reason to add more tartness to the tomatoes with balsamic vineagar. Southern Italians believe the firm, tart slightly green tomatoes are the perfect complement to soft, milky texture of fresh mozzarella.

Speaking of fresh mozzarella, we are talking about the type you find sold packed in water, not the stuff you find at the grocer in shrink-wrapped plastic that is more often used for making pizza. Don’t even bother serving those rubber balls of mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and basil. Not prudent at all.

I usually buy a tub of fresh mozzarella at Costco. It saves me a lot of money but also means I always have some on hand. The shelf life is at least a couple of weeks but be sure to change the water every once in awhile. Good quality fresh mozzarella should be soft, milky and sweet in flavor. You will know when it is starting to go just by the smell. So if you do not plan to have mozzarella every other night, you may be better off purchasing it in smaller quantitites.

The olive oil should be the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford. I like the olive oil from Georgio Zampa’s farm in Sardinia that you can read about at GatewayGourmet.com, but you can find good quality extra virgin olive oil at any gourmet specialty store and now in your local supermarkets. You don’t want to overpower the other fresh ingredients with the oil so you only need a small amount.

The salt should be sea salt. I know I wrote an article called Salt is Salt that basically says all salt is NaCl and therefore there is no difference in taste, but I have been asking a lot of chefs and testing various types of  salts myself and I agree with the chefs that sea salt has a cleaner salty flavor. I’ll work on a more comprehensive taste test and report back in a future blog. You can learn more about sea salt and where to purchase some high end product also at GatewayGourmet.

Of course the basil should be fresh and I like to use whole leaves depending on the size of the tomatoes slices. You want to make sure the basil is fresh, not wilted. This time of year there is so much basil around, you can pick it up in most supermarkets at a fairly reasonable price.

We grow our own basil in our backyard and I’m not sure why, but it seems to have a much stronger flavor than the basil we get at the market. I’m guessing the incredibly strong flavor has something to do with its type.

Putting the Insalada Caprese Together

There are lots of ways you can arrange the salad. I typically like to start with whole tomato slices arranged on a platter or individual serving plates but lately I have been cutting the tomato slices in half and sort of stack them like fallen dominos. How thick you slice the tomato gives you some more options. I think ¼ to ½ inch slices work fine.

Next I add a layer of fresh mozzarella to each tomato slice. Be sure to bring the mozzarella cheese to room temperature before serving. Cold mozzarella will not have the same flavor as room temperature cheese.

I then add the fresh basil leaves on top of the mozzarella matching leaf size with tomato size. Big leaves for the bigger slices, smaller ones for the smaller slices.

Then comes the extra virgin olive oil. I stick my thumb over the end of the bottle and drizzle it over the tomato, mozzarella, basil combination. Depending on your personal tastes, add more or less oil to the salad. You don’t want to overwhelm the flavor, just enhance it and remember, it is easier to add more oil then take it away.

It’s now time for a pinch or two of sea salt and some freshly ground pepper. If you don’t have a pepper grinder, I highly recommend you invest in one and then try out various types of  pepper. You will be pleasantly surprised by flavor of good quality pepper freshly ground before using.

Balsamic Vinegar or Not

I’m sorry but I like aged balsamic vinegar on my insalata caprese. Maybe it’s the fact that our tomatoes are not unripe and tart or maybe it’s because the aged balsamic vinegar adds a wonderful sweetness to the dish.

Good quality aged balsamic vinegar is nothing like the inexpensive stuff you buy at the supermarket. It is very expensive and is used oh so sparingly. Just a few drops can add a whole lot of  flavor to anything you drizzle it on. It is nothing like red or white wine vinegar and I would NOT add these to my insalate caprese.

You can read more about traditionally aged balsamic vinegar at gatewaygourmet.com and where to purchase it at great prices.

Great Time of Year

With all the wonderful fresh tomatoes and basil around, do some of your own experimenting with it and see what combination works for you. There is no perfect way to prepare it, just what tastes good to you.

I grew up eating sliced cucumber salad but we called it agurke salat (a-gorka sal-at) which is the Danish name. My mother being a dane would serve it to us as a side dish or on open faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød. Just writing about these sandwiches is making my mouth water.

Here’s a photo of what the opened faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød look like. This photo below is from http://www.copenhagenet.dk/. Smørrebrød sandwiches are as much art as they are a delicacy. I remember my mor mor (mother’s mother or grandmother) taking her time to assemble a plate of these delicate sandwiches for lunch. And when I was just a kid visiting her in Denmark, we would go to Tivioli Gardens where there was a shop that sold them individually. She would let me pick out my favorites and then we would go sit somewhere in the park and dine. I can’t wait to take my kids there when they get older. Some of these sandwiches used agurke salat as one of the ingredients.

When I tell friends about my Danish cucumber salad, I’m often told they know it but call it by another name native to their own ethnicity.  I’m guessing it is a popular dish to all the northern Scandinavian countries and their neighbors.

Agurke Salat

There are two important steps when preparing this cucumber salad. First, slice the cucumbers paper thin. Second, salt them to remove, as my mother would say, “the burp” from them. Other than that, the rest is easy.

I like to make a big batch at a time and eat them all week long. I even use the vinegar mixture a second time and just slice and salt some more cucumbers.

Ingredients:

• 3 large cucumbers
• Table salt
• 1 cup of white wine vinegar
• ½ cup water
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
• salt & pepper, to taste

How to Make Sliced Cucumber Salad

I leave the peel on but you can peel them if you like. I find it makes them too flimsy if you cut them paper-thin. I used a food processor to slice them but you can use a mandolin or if you have a lot of patience, slice them by hand but be sure they are paper thin.

Next I lay them out on some paper towels and sprinkle them with salt. I’m not sure if it is true, but my mom says the salting helps remove whatever is in the cucumbers that make them repeat on you. Let them sit there for about 10 minutes.

After they have been salted, put them in a colander and wash all the salt off with cold water. If you don’t get most of the salt off, the final result will be way too salty. Gently squeeze the sliced cucumbers in your hands to get rid of as much water as possible. You can let them drain in the colander while you make the vinegar mixture.

Prepare the Vinegar Mixture

In a medium sized bowl that you are going to serve the cucumbers in, add the vinegar with the water, then the sugar and coriander seeds. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the cucumbers and coriander seeds and mix together with your hands or spoon if you don’t like to get your hands dirty. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours so the cucumbers pick up all the flavor of the sugared vinegar.

This is really simple to make and goes especially well with pork.