Chicken Ceasar Salad

Apparently I need some insurance for kitchen accidents. I'm notorious for cutting and burning myself. I've gotten better over the years (at least with my knife skills), but I rarely go more than a month without some kind of minor burn.

Unfortunately, my knife skills failed me recently when I was making croutons with old crusty bread (Sullivan St. Bakery recipe for No Knead Bread, made famous by Mark Bittman). I was sawing through it with a serrated knife, and before long I was sawing through my left index finger.

I'm finally to the point where my finger (which I sawed a nice big gaping wound in) is healed up enough that it doesn't hurt when I type. I've made lots of delicious meals since then but I figured it would be appropriate to revisit that evening and share with you my delicious chicken caesar salad.

First, I need to provide a disclaimer, I'm not good with amounts (at least when cooking, I'm a bit more careful with baking), I just kind of eyeball things until they look right. I just take a wild guess and taste as I go.

Ingredients

1 head of romaine lettuce (cleaned and torn into bite sized pieces)
2 cloves garlic
2 anchovy fillets
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 to 1 tbs lemon juice (depending on your taste)
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4-1/2 tsp dijon mustard (I used a spicy deli style mustard this time and it was quite good)
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (good quality is a must, get the real stuff if you can afford it!)
salt to taste if you need it, but I doubt you will. Anchovies, Worcestershire and Parm are all really salty.


Ok, first I started off with the croutons. You can use store bought if you want, but I had some leftover bread that I had made (if you do a google search for no-knead bread, it'll come up, there will be a link to Mark Bittman on New York Times. For some reason it won't let me link to it. It's the most amazing bread ever you should make it now!) so I took it out of the freezer, cut it up (it was still a little frozen, hence the sawing of the hand) drizzled it with olive oil, fresh garlic, black pepper and a little salt, and toasted it in the oven.


Meanwhile, I used a garlic press to process the garlic, then put the garlic in a bowl along with the anchovy fillets. You should use two forks to mash the garlic and the anchovies into a paste (you should also use a wooden bowl, but I don't have one, it would make things much easier). I could only use one fork thanks to my now useless left hand.


Next add the egg yolk, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce and whisk. Drizzle in the olive oil as you continue to whisk.


Finally toss in the greens, along with the Parmesan cheese. I served mine with the croutons and chicken I grilled on my stove-top grill pan (a Christmas gift from my parents a few years ago, it has proved to be one of my most frequently used kitchen tools).


Enjoy!

Now I'm off to start some cinnamon rolls and then head to the theater to see Iron Man 2!