The tuna indus­try will tell you that tuna salad is America’s favorite salad. I even found a coleslaw blog, also “America’s favorite salad”. The point is, we like our sal­ads. Chef, 3-bean, jello (if you want to go way back), potato salads…the list goes on. But for my money, all hail caesar.

Cae­sar salad is widely held to be the cre­ation of Ital­ian restau­ran­teur Cae­sar Car­dini, who lived in my home town of San Diego. Like so many other well-loved cre­ations, this salad is thought to be the result of that old adage “neces­sity is the mother of inven­tion”. Appar­ently, in 1924, when an onslaught of cus­tomers depleted his pantry, Mr. Car­dini came up his recipe on the fly, serv­ing it table-side with much flair.

The dress­ing for this dish has mor­phed along the decades. The orig­i­nal included Worces­ter­shire sauce (which has a small amount of anchovy in it), to any­one dar­ing enough to serve whole anchovies on top. I like the mid­dle road – anchovy paste – all the punch and none of the hair. Tra­di­tion­ally served with crou­tons, I like to top this salad with chunks of grilled chicken. If you must have some­thing crunchy, drop in a hand­ful of pis­ta­chios. But what­ever you do, don’t for­get the anchovy paste in the dress­ing – it’s deli­cious. I swear.

Prep time: 20 min­utes
Total time: 1 hr 20 min­utes (includes mar­i­nat­ing time)
Yield: 4 main course sal­ads
Spe­cial equip­ment: grill pan or out­door grill

4 bone­less chicken breasts or 6 thighs
1/2 c. lemon juice (juice of about 2 lemons)
1/4 c. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
lots of freshly ground black pep­per
8 c. romaine let­tuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
1 c. cae­sar dress­ing 
4 lemon wedges for garnish

1. Mix lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pep­per in shal­low dish. Place chicken pieces into mari­nade for at least an hour and up to 4.
2. Grill chicken about 7 min­utes per side over hot grill.
3. While chicken is grilling, mix salad dress­ing and set aside.
4. Remove chicken and let rest for 5–10 min­utes and then cut on diagonal.
5. Mix greens with dress­ing and sep­a­rate onto four plates. Arrange chicken on top, douse with a bit more dress­ing and serve with a lemon wedge.