What is the deal with Caesar salad?? I’ve ordered it in many different places from neighborhood cafes here in Munich, to stylish places in California or Budapest. If there’s no dish on a restaurant’s menu that coaxes me instantly AND the place happens to offers Caesar salad – plan B is an easy one. That, however, doesn’t automatically mean that all of my Caesar salad endeavors have been pleasurable ones. Quite the contrary, in fact I’ve had really bad ones. Either my expectations towards this very salad are way out of reach for most restaurants or serving this classic gives chefs a good excuse to put a perfectly good label on mediocre food quality delivered. Limp leaves, drowned in way too much dressing, over the top garlicky or Parmesan cluttered – all these things can quickly ruin an otherwise beautifully balanced mix.
One of the very few things I regret during our last trip to California was bad timing. We had read about Humphry Slocombe’s prosciutto ice cream (among many other unusual flavors) and it quickly made it to the top of our list. However the day we went, we were told -by the the friendly girl behind the counter- that it was in the making and would take another day – the day we’d already be on our way to Los Angeles. Of course we returned to the Mission District as soon as we returned to San Francisco, yet were out of luck again. We tried. But no prosciutto ice cream for us. Sure, the other flavors available gave their best shot at making up for this (tiny) letdown and their Secret Breakfast was especially successful. My favorite! And of course not to miss their Boccolone Lard Caramels. Come on, how can you not love an ice cream shop, where they offer you to sample almost all of their available flavors?
If you count yourself to the species of people who have a hard time understanding the appeal of porridge and to see charisma in baked oats recipes, hey I’m with you, I completely understand what you are going through, I once was on the dark side your side. Once. Until now. Problem being, I can’t rationalize or even remotely have a logical explanation for what made me head back to the kitchen late last evening after stumbling upon Macheesmo’s recipe. Believe me, I’m not the type of girl who is easily impressed by the words oats or oatmeal, quite the contrary. Maybe reading the recipe has put a spell on me?
Last year, pretty much around the same time, we had a long meeting at my editor’s place. The sun was shining, all attendees were bursting of enthusiasm, and the location – a spacious shadowy balcony overlooking the neighborhood of Au-Haidhausen – was the ultimate place one could wish for on a hot summer day. It was the kick-off meeting for a new cookbook project.
