Little Caesar salad

salad! salad!

Hi, clowns!

Sorry about the slight radio silence. Had a bad week with my eye and some other horseshit, and life briefly kicked me in the nuts. Thankfully, things have stabilized a bit (and I’m hoping they stay that way). But don’t worry, this week, I’ve got a real fun one, showcasing my sick cooking skills in a way that would probably make James Beard cry out of his ass.

It all centers around Little Caesars, the greatest fast food pizza place on the planet. Davida and I secretly love the shit out of Little Caesars, because for a bargain bin pizza place, it fuckin’ rocks. I mean, come on, a perfectly greasy pizza for just $5.99? How could you be mad at that? Plus, it has no business being good at that price, and by good, I mean mostly okay, but whatever.

But the name “Caesar” also has a very important connection to another favorite dish of mine, and that’s obviously Caesar salad. (What’s amazing is that Caesar salad is actually from Tijuana, Mexico.) So how could I combine my love of Little Caesars and Caesar salad to merge them into the greatest fusion dish ever known?

By turning it into a Little Caesar salad, of course.

Everyone knows a Caesar salad is all about the dressing.

So I went to the grocery store and picked up some of the basic ingredients, which includes mustard, lemons, eggs, anchovies, and of course, some romaine lettuce. Then I swung by our neighborhood Little Caesars, got a Hot-N-Ready (insert yo’ momma joke here) pepperoni pizza, and an order of Crazy Bread and sauce. When I asked the employee if I could tack on 10 tubs of garlic butter, she couldn’t help but laugh and give me a funny look. If she only knew what I was really up to.

Croutons are an integral part of the Caesar salad experience, so I decided to slice up some Crazy Bread and toast those bits off.

I wanted to incorporate Little Caesars’ Crazy Sauce (aka their pizza sauce), so I looked towards fancy Italian fine dining for inspiration.

There’s a famous restaurant in NYC called Carbone, which makes its own croutons by tossing the bread in tomato paste first. That’s kind of a cool idea, since you bake tomato flavor right into those blocks of bread. Obviously, Casa di Dannis would use Crazy Sauce for this, thanks to this idea from Carbone(r). And in the spirit of the food world, I will pretend I made this concept up myself, and take full credit for it without acknowledging I stole it from Carbone. Hail me as a genius, dickholes, as I rake in a billion dollars per year and spend it on schlong enlargement surgery.

I took my sliced up Crazy Bread bits and toasted them off in the countertop oven for a bit.

Did I say “toasted?”

I meant “burned.” Let’s try that again.

My second attempt at Crazy Bread croutons was much better, though they weren’t quite as crisp as I’d have liked.

Now it was time for me to whip up the Little Caesar salad dressing.

I took the mini food processor attachment for my immersion blender, and put anchovies, Dijon mustard, raw egg yolk, lemon juice, and grated parmesan in it, while finishing it off with a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Who knew anchovies and egg yolks would be a match made in heaven?

But here was my secret weapon: the garlic butter sauce.

Like Papa John’s, Little Caesars has its own margarine-like garlic dipping sauce. Caesar dressing contains both oil (usually olive oil) and plenty of garlic, but this was like two ingredients squashed into one. To make drizzling this stuff easier, I dumped a bunch of tubs into my Pyrex measuring cup, which has a handy pouring spout.

And fortunately (or unfortunately), I broke my stupid mini food processor top in a clumsy accident, which left this hilariously handy hole in the lid.

It’s been like this forever, and you long-time clowns have experienced my hole before. That meant I could drizzle the garlic butter sauce into the dressing base slowly, and I hoped to God that meant the emulsion would hold. Good thing I asked for 10 fucking tubs and had plenty of backup.

Holy crap, it actually worked!

Guys, I have a confession to make. This is the first time I’ve ever made Caesar dressing from scratch. What’s wild is that I had to do it this way, using ingredients from Little Caesars, but I will consider that as a badge of honor that nobody else in this world can claim. I am Dannis Ree, mayhem incarnate, king of fart and ball jokes, and the greatest food writer in all of history!!!

I put a bag of pre-chopped romaine lettuce in a large mixing bowl (yeah, yeah, I’m lazy), and tossed it with my Little Caesar dressing.

Then I threw in a handful of shaved parm along with the tomato Crazy Bread croutons.

Suck it, Keller. Suck it, Achatz. Sponsor me with a million bucks, Little Caesars. Daddy wants a new 2009 Toyota Camry.

I garnished the salad with a few slices of pepperoni from my Hot-N-Ready and called it a day.

Also, plating the salad is when I realized we do not own an actual salad bowl. I am a failure of a food writer, and this is the greatest shame of my life.

I am extremely ecstatic to report that my Little Caesar salad was, in fact, good.

It could have used a bit of extra salt, and I eventually added some black pepper to it later, but it tasted exactly like a Caesar salad should. It was savory from the anchovies, parmesan cheese, and Worcestershire sauce, and tangy from the lemon juice. The garlic from the garlic butter dipping sauce came out front and center, but unfortunately it coated my mouth with a weird waxy feeling from that hydrogenated soybean oil shit.

Davida said, “I feel like the croutons could be crispier but otherwise it tastes just like something you’d get at a shitty Italian restaurant.” She clarified shortly afterwards that she meant this as a divine compliment, not an insult.

Shitty Italian restaurant my ass, this is the house that Caesar built. Now that I think about it, Caesar (I’m talkin’ bout Julius) did end up on the ground shanked, which is why I’ve always thought the mascot and name was a little violent for a pizza chain, but eh, minor detail. Gloriously affordable pizza means people will conveniently look away. Plus now, we have learned that you can repurpose Little Caesars into the greatest salad ever known. You have not died in vain, Little Caesar.

Pizza! Pizza! Not anymore. Salad! Salad!

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