Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
want to ask yourself,” Van says, “is the wine going to add to or take away from the
salad?” Since two of the wines are Gewurztraminers and I don't do sweet wines, I am sus-
picious, but something in the salad cuts the sweetness of the wines. I think, not for the last
time, that Van might know what he's talking about.
“What do you think of the salad?” Van says. We all agree it's pretty good. “This is a
really good salad for off the shelf supermarket products. It's as close to mine as you're go-
ing to get. Okay, who wants to make the Bush Caesar salad? This is the one made with the
least desirable products off the shelf, according to my recipe.”
Well, I'm a Bush girl. I raise my hand, and take my place at the salad table at the head
of the room.
We start with powdered garlic and things go downhill from there. The anchovies are
paste, the coddled egg is Egg Beaters (at which there is a roar of disbelief), the lemon
juice is bottled, the olive oil is purified, the vinegar is red wine, and the parmesan cheese
is Kraft (this time there is a groan of horror). I made it, I ate it, I didn't regurgitate. A lot
of wine disappears during the consumption of the second salad, and there isn't a clean
plate in the house, although I notice this salad made even the chardonnay taste bad.
We turn with relief to the tasting of croutons, four kinds, including croutons made to the
original Caesar salad recipe invented by Caesar Cardini at his hotel in Tijuana fifty years
ago, whose salad we make next. It is made with lime and Worcestershire sauce instead of
lemon and vinegar, and is much lighter in flavor. “Lime acid is much sweeter than lem-
on,” Van says. “Plus we're using Romano cheese instead of parmesan.”
A signal to pass the cheese, ten kinds of parmesan. This time my comments range from
“salty” to “meaty” to “blue cheese?” “You should always bring cheese up to room temper-
ature before you serve it,” Van says. “The Kraft tastes like cardboard, right? Seven bucks
a pound at Carr's. Whereas you can go to Costco and get the best parmesan cheese in the
world, the Parmigiano Reggiano, fresh from Italy, for about the same price!”
The decibel level is rising in direct proportion to the lowering of the wine in our
glasses, and by this time Van is having to shout his remarks. We taste ten kinds of olive
oil. My comments range from “olive off the tree” to “Three-in-1 oil,” although, to be fair,
by this time my tongue is a little numb. “You want first cold pressed olive oil,” Van says.
“'Extra virgin' is just a marketing ploy.”
