Posts Tagged With: Barney the Dinosaur

Mexican Entree

CAESAR’S SALAD

INGREDIENTS

1 head romaine lettuce
4 bread slices
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil (1 tablespoon more later)
2 ounces anchovies, cut in half (optional)

1 egg
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

PREPARATION

Separate romaine lettuce into leaves. Tear leaves into 1″ squares. Remove crusts from bread slices. Cut bread into ½” cubes. Cut one garlic clove into four pieces and rub them along the salad bowl. Discard. (Oh no, no, discard the garlic pieces, not the salad bowl. Goodness, careful sentence structure matters.)

Add the other garlic clove and 1/4 cup olive oil to pan. Sauté at low-medium heat for 5 minutes or 300 seconds. Discard garlic clove. (It’s a bad day to be garlic.) Add bread cubes to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until bread cubes are crisp on all sides. Stir frequently. Remove crisp bread crumbs or croutons and place them on paper towels to drain.

Add romaine squares and croutons to salad bowl. (Add optional anchovies here.)

Add egg, Dijon mustard, pepper, salt, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and red wine vinegar to blender. Use mix or middle setting to blend ingredients for 30 seconds. Pour this dressing into salad bowl. Lightly toss salad. Sprinkle salad with Parmesan cheese.

Note, pregnant women and small children should not eat raw eggs.

TIDBITS

1) Anchovies are a happening item. Italian prostitutes of the 18th century used anchovies when making their famous “spaghetti alla puttanesca” for their customers.

2) The Romans used anchovy entrails to make an aphrodisiac, to reduce ulcers, to cure dysentery, or to season their food.

3) So if you were a Roman woman and a man had you over for dinner and he served anchovy sauce, you might want to wonder about him.

4) On the other hand, we could dramatically cut the cost of health care by requiring all pizzas to come with anchovies. We wouldn’t need hospital or medical insurance, just a large anchovy with extra cheese.

5) And the aphrodisiacal–whoa spell check is okay with that–qualities of anchovy pizzas would mean we wouldn’t have to see those ViagraTM ads on T.V. anymore.

6) But PlayboyTM would sport ads about anchovies all the time.

7) The entire economy would be directed to processing anchovies.

8) Military spending would fall to zero.

9) Our anchovy-driven sexual frenzies would leave us wide open to conquest by our enemies.

10) But anchovies also contain a toxin called domoic acid whichcan drive a seagull insane if ingested in too large a quantity.

11) Which is why the United States Army has warehouses full of anchovies. Within 15 minutes of an enemy invasion, the roofs of all these warehouses retract to reveal millions of vats just brimming with anchovies.

12) America’s heroic seagulls would then gorge themselves on their favorite food, became crazy and attack the invaders, just like in Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds.

13) America cannot be conquered.

14) But then any country with sufficient anchovies and pelican couldn’t be conquered.

15) Countries would have an incentive to stockpile these items.

16) I fear an anchovy-and-pelican race between nations.

17) But if worse comes to worse, we will blast the Barney-the-Dinosaur song at our enemies until they cry uncle.

18) Let us banish this frightening scenario by sipping on a wonderful, ice cold root beer. Ah, life is good again.

19) Caesar’s salad, anyone?

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.