NOT JUST ANOTHER CHICKEN CAESAR RECIPE, pg 298
I thought this was going to be just another chicken caesar recipe even though it SAID it wasn’t. I dunno, there’s not much to play around with to elevate or single-out any particular chicken caesar salad. I mean, I guess you could change up the greens and the cheese or whatever. But in the end caesar dressings are pretty set. So is the grilled or pan-fried off or left-over chicken.
But then I read that the chicken is coated in the dressing and THEN fried off. Well, hmm, that’s not the normal technique. And maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be just another chicken salad. I think the jury is out on that. What I do know is that coating the chicken in caesar dressing and then pan-frying is pure GENIUS.
First, you make the dressing. This is a riff on the Julia one where you use mayo as the base so you don’t mess with a raw yolk. So, garlic and anchovies are smashed together into a paste. Put into a bowl. Throw in some parm into the bowl. Then throw in some zest of lemon. then add in mayo, SOY SAUCE, and dijon into the bowl. Mix well. The soy sauce adds saltiness and umami. It doesn’t make it taste Asian at all. And that’s it.
Take half and coat a pound of chicken and fry it off. While it’s frying, make the salad. Take the other half and toss with lettuce after you have squeezed some lemon and salted it. Romaine is traditional. but mine sucked and needed to be thrown out. So I used butter leaf. I think this salad need a heartier green and I would use something else next. It was a delicious learning point.
She gives you a recipe for making croutons. I didn’t.
I would make this again.
