FAMILY FAVORITE CAESAR SALAD

Caesar salad used to be our favorite salad when we went out to eat in restaurants, but of course this was no longer an option once we changed our diet to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It broke my heart listening to my youngest daughter bravely placing her own Caesar salad order by saying “please no croutons and no dressing” - leaving her with just Romaine lettuce leaves and a sprinkle of parmesan. Once my middle daughter remarked dryly, albeit a little too loudly: “No carbs ever!!!!” to clarify the situation, which left us cracking up and the waiter mortified. My youngest daughter’s very watered-down version works when you’re hungry and sometimes for us it’s just about the experience of going out to restaurant that makes us happy. Also the fact that I get a rare break for cooking can be the driving motivation to put the poor waiter through the ordeal of very complicated orders resulting in us betting on whether he or she will be able to serve the order correctly (most times they do!). We really appreciate the American way that order changes are usually welcome and followed precisely. It’s still a little frustrating when you remember how easy it was to go out to eat and simply order whatever’s on the menu. At least we know that by now we can recreate many of our favorite dishes at home using simple whole ingredients.

Now back to the Caesar salad story, last summer we ate at a contemporary fancy restaurant in Heidelberg that offered dishes made with simple whole ingredients and everything was made from scratch. They offered Caesar salad and I interviewed the waiter on all of the ingredients in the dressing and to my surprise all of the ingredients were fine for us. Yippee, whenever I find dishes that work for us in a restaurant, I’m more than thrilled because I love going out to eat and I really enjoy a dish that I don’t have to cook myself. I loved the dressing so much (still without croutons of course!) that I memorized the ingredients so I could make it at home too. It seems a little ironic that we traveled all the way to Germany to fall in love with Caesar salad once more, but at this stage we take what we get, right? We have been making this salad regularly since last summer. Finally I wrote everything down and tried to take a picture that’s similar to the salad that they served to us. For dinner we love to add meat or fish, and the girls also brought it along for school lunches if we happened to have leftover dressing. The dressing works wonders - everybody eats more green lettuce than they usually would!

I hope you enjoy this “reimported” salad as much as we do.
Guten Appetit!

INGREDIENTS
2 Romaine lettuce

for the dressing:
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp anchovy paste
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan (make sure check the ingredient list in case you buy grated parmesan cheese)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp honey
freshly grated pepper

to garnish:
freshly grated parmesan

INSTRUCTIONS
Wash the lettuce and cut into bite-size pieces. Add to a salad bowl.

Add all of the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl and whisk until well combined and creamy.

Add the dressing to the lettuce and toss to combine.

Garnish with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

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