So It’s Grilled Roasted Garlic Caesar Salad Time.
How can you improve a Caesar salad? Nothing seems to refresh like crisp romaine lettuce tossed with olive oil, fresh egg, garlic, salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese with enough lemon to cut the richness of the dressing and brighten the flavors. Here are two things we do as summer approaches to ratchet up the flavor in our Caesar salad entrees during Garlic Festival Weekend.
First, we roast the garlic we use in the dressing. To do this slice the tips the top off a garlic bulb. Then place the garlic in a baking dish, drizzle with olive and bake in a pre-heated oven at 250 degrees for approximately 20 minutes (or until the smell of garlic is permeating the kitchen). The bulb will be brown; the garlic soft. Squeeze the bulb to extract the garlic.
Roasted garlic caramelizes the starch in the bulb producing a sweeter, more buttery flavor. It takes some of the heat and sharpness out which you taste in raw garlic. Roasted garlic can be spread on bread like butter and eaten straight (if you try that with raw garlic you won’t taste anything else for a week, nor be kissed by a stranger… but safe from vampires).
Second, we grill the romaine lettuce. The head of romaine is sliced in half lengthwise. The flat part is placed on the char-broiler and grilled. The resulting grill marks add a smoky flavor to the lettuce.
To finish the salad place two of the romaine halves on a plate. Drizzle with your Caesar dressing and top with Parmesan cheese. Or add grilled chicken or strips of grilled steak and some garlic toast and you’ll have a complete dinner.
We will be featuring our Caesar Salad Entrees this way on Garlic Festival Weekend, but we can do grilled Caesar salads upon request any time.
