Beside the Stream

I recently started making croutons.  It’s a great way to use a half loaf of day-old bread, they’re much tastier than supermarket croutons, and you get to skip those unfortunate half-boxes of stale bread products.  Saving money, simplifying the pantry, using up stale bread… it’s all good.  But not so fast: it takes a looong time for croutons to toast, about as long as it takes to clean up the kitchen.   By the time the croutons are evenly toasted you feel like you’ve cooked and you have a clean kitchen, but there isn’t actually much for dinner.  Which is why I’ve been making chicken Caesar salad regularly/ pasta is optional.

This is a half loaf of day-old bread begging to be made into croutons.

Take a big pan and put in a dollop of olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic, pressed.  Go low on the heat. 

When the garlic is almost done, pour the olive oil in the pan into a cup.  Instead of ”Leave the gun; Take the canolli”, we get ”Leave the garlic; Pour off the oil”.  This is the critical step that is missing from cookbooks.  If you don’t pour off the olive oil you end up with greasy croutons, which are not tasty.  If you pour off all of the oil, it turns out that oil retained in the garlic is enough for the batch of croutons.

Cut a short half a loaf of bread into cubes, toss it thoroughly with the garlic bits and some herbs, and leave it on low.  There should be a single layer of bread cubes in the pan. 

Now you get to empty the sink, do the pots, and wipe the counter with an occasional toss of the croutons.   Don’t you feel blessed?  Plus you still have to make something for dinner, since croutons barely count.  At a minimum for the salad you need romaine and either Parmesan, Asiago or Romano.  Since I’m feeding teenaged boys, I’m adding chicken breasts; if it was just Bob and me I’d use hard-boiled eggs instead.

Pull out a salad bowl, and tear up romaine.  By the time the kitchen is clean and the salad bowl is ready, the croutons are done too.  Take the whole frying pan of croutons and garlic bits, and dump them over the lettuce. 

Dice the chicken breasts and cook them in the frypan you cooked the croutons in.  The heat can be turned up to medium, and it’s time to make the dressing.  

Take the cup with the oil you poured off the pan, and add the following:

Start with half a lemon, one clove of garlic pressed, a dash of worcestershire instead of anchovies (unless you happen to have some anchovy paste), a smear of dijon mustard, and add some more olive oil–classic caesar salad dressing so far, and then instead of raw egg yolk do a cheat with a little Hellman’s mayo as a binder.  Taste it–a little salt? 

Grate the cheese, and the chicken will be done.  Toss the chicken on top of the croutons, toss the cheese on top of that and mix in the dressing.  Grind lots of pepper on top.  It’s a pretty salad, don’t you think?