Ingredients
For the salad
- 1-2 romaine lettuce
- 2-4 anchovy fillets per plate
- 1 large chicken breast
- 1 handful of natural almonds (per person)
- 2 tablespoons of caesar sauce per dish
- A few nicks of Parmesan cheese or aged cheese
- 1 hard-boiled egg per person (optional)
For the caesar sauce
- 2 eggs
- 60 gr cured manchego cheese
- 15-20 g balsamic vinegar of modena
- 4 Anchovies well drained
- C/n (20 cl approx) Extra virgin olive oil
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
Let’s cook
1. The first thing for a good sauce is to select well the ingredients, for which it is almost indispensable to look well at the labels. Almost everything they sell are «Balsamic creams», which to me already tells me that among the first 3 ingredients will have added sugar. Look for a vinegar that does not contain sugar as an ingredient, the main ingredient has to be vinegar and with less than 1g of salt per 100 ml. I found this one at carrefour.
2. Another important part is the cheese we use. My recommendation is that you use a cured cheese in which the main ingredient is sheep’s milk, or even goat’s milk. This way we will get more flavor and it is easy to find Spanish products that are very good and cheaper than Parmesan. Another hint, those mixed with cow’s milk are usually cheaper.
3. For the sauce, we start with a couple of eggs, cheese, anchovies, lemon juice squeezed by hand and sherry vinegar. Grind, but not too much, about 5 seconds at speed 5. Then pour the oil in a thin stream through the hole in the glass while blending at constant speed 5. The amount of oil is adjustable but it is important that the stream is constant for at least 30 seconds. Then, program at speed 5-10 for 1 minute.
4. We test the texture by dropping a trickle from the spoon into the glass. For it to be thick but loose, it may need a little more oil, for which we would close it again by pouring a trickle of oil through the nozzle at speed 5. As the sauce already has cheese and anchovies we are not going to add salt to the mixture in the salad bowl, nor oil. WARNING, it contains eggs so it can be kept in the fridge for 2-3 days. Serve and store, do not leave it at room temperature.
5. Let’s go with the chicken, we put a pan with a few drops of olive oil to heat. Take a chicken breast and cut it to taste. My suggestion is in semi-thick strips to have something to chew and feel the fibers of the breast. You can also use the breast of a leftover roast chicken or heat and cut up the fillets left over from another meal.
6. Whether we use a fresh breast or leftover chicken, my recommendation is that once cooked and before putting it in the salad, cut it and brown it a little in a hot frying pan. This way it gets more color, aroma and flavor.
7. About which lettuce to use the most faithful to the recipe would be to use the romaine. But recently I discovered that with the lettuce of tocadero it is also spectacular. Both are equally recommendable, although from a nutritional point of view, color is very important to me. The lettuces with greener leaves tend to contain more chlorophyll, which favors that they contain less natural sugars than other lettuces.
8. We strip the lettuce, wash the leaves and put them to drain. We take the large lettuce leaves, split them with our hands and place them in the bowl, on top of the chicken pieces cut to taste. Add a couple of anchovies cut to taste and spread them over the salad. Do not put too many because the sauce is already quite salty.
9. Add about 2 tablespoons to our salad plate. We are NOT making a salad, and as the sauce has a slightly dense consistency with little it is impregnated a lot. This helps to prevent the sauce from settling on the bottom, to distribute it well and to reduce the amount of sauce that is thrown away.
10. Finally we add the almonds instead of bread crusts, making a contrast of color and texture with the rest of the ingredients great and without fried. Add a few slices of cheese on top with the help of a peeler so that they can be seen and enhance the texture of the dish before serving it at the table.