Salads. That’s probably what I like best about spring and summer food. Fresh lettuce combined with creamy, pungent dressings all livened up with seasonal fruits, crispy vegetables and grilled meat or chicken.

Give me some crusty French bread, home made butter and a glass of wine on the side and I’m happy.

This is a simple salad very loosely based on the Caesar salad. It’s not really a caesar salad because there’s no mayonnaise in the authentic version. Or chicken. It’s an impostor! A tasty one, though.

But then again: there shouldn’t be any anchovies or bacon in a Caesar salad either. They were never part of Caesar Cardani’s original recipe.

 
Ingredients:

 
Salad:

1 head romaine lettuce
2 chicken breast
Parmesan

Herbed Croutons:

5 slices stale, white bread
4 tbsp oil
1 sprig rosemary
small handful flat-leaf parsley
1 large garlic clove
pinch of salt

Dressing:

2 tbsp mayonnaise
1/4 small garlic clove
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp worcestershiresauce
1/8 tsp black pepper
a little sugar

 
Directions:

Killer combo: garlic, rosemary and parsley.

You can finely mince all the ingredients, or use the blender/food processor. I did.

Brush a little flavored oil all over the chicken.

 
Don’t dip the brush in the oil jar, though, just pour a little over the chicken and then brush. You don’t want to cross contaminate the oil.
 

Trim the crusts and cube the bread. Transfer it to a casserole.

Mix the bread with the remaining herbed oil and sprinkle a bit of salt over the bread.

 
Bake the croutons at 350F˚ (175C˚) for 30 minutes. I don’t like my croutons dark, but if you do add extra baking time.
 

Heat your stove top grill and grill the chicken breast roughly 6 to 8 minutes on each side.

The croutons should be done by now. And the oven should still be warm. Perfect.

Normally I would have pounded the chicken to cut cooking time, but for a salad I want to keep the chicken as is. So I give it 10 minutes in a hot oven.

Mix all ingredients listed under dressing and grate the garlic in there. Stir. It’ll be grainy at first.

Soon it will turn into a creamy dressing.

 
The dressing can become quite acidic. My lemon was pretty sour. You can solve this by stirring in a tiny sprinkling of sugar. The sugar won’t sweeten the dressing, it will simply neutralize the acidity.
 

Wash and dry the romaine lettuce.

You can cut out the ribs (they can be tough), but I slice it in 2 inch pieces and rip the leaves off the ribs.

 
Somehow I think it looks better when you rip it with your hands. I like to get all medieval at times. Feel free to use a knife!
 

Thinly slice the chicken breast. Grate the Parmesan or use a vegetable peeler to shave curls.

 
Combine everything in a big bowl, drizzle some of the dressing on top and finish with the Parmesan. You can also add some crispy bacon and avocado if you like.
 

This truly is the king of all salads.