Proper Chicken Ceaser Salad

How happy am I to be back in my kitchen!!! As much as I enjoyed the food in India, I have been longing for simple plain meals. No oil, no spices, just fresh lightly cooked ingredients.

Add to that soaring temperatures of 35C plus, and it all adds up to salads. And lots of them. Just the sight of a few bright, crisp green leaves makes me happy at the moment.

One recipe I have been dying to try is Jamie Oliver's ceaser salad. I saw him cook this on his latest TV show ages ago and it looked so fantastic. Chicken legs are roasted over the top of the bread croutons so that they soak up all the juices adding an additional depth of flavour.

I have to say that it did not disappoint. It was so, so good.



One of the best things I found about this recipe is the idea of mixing the parmesan cheese into the dressing. I know that sounds like a totally silly thing to say.

But really, ceaser salads are hard to eat!! The croutons and bacon bits are hard to get your fork into and are impossible to balance all the way to your mouth. Same with the cheese, it all just falls off and you end up with a big pile of it at the bottom of the bowl. Then it's always served in deep round bowls, which makes it all so hard to get at and even more impossible. No wonder so many of them are drowned in dressing, it glues everything together.



Anyway, enough of my whining. To make this salad extra special I threw in some roasted mushrooms and added some roasted garlic to the dressing. A light drizzle was more than enough. It added great flavour to the salad without a lot of oiliness.

I ate this for lunch for three days in a row. Yum.

Proper Chicken Ceaser Salad
(adapted from Jamie at Home)

Tear a loaf of ciabatta bread into thumb size pieces. Place in a roasting try with four chicken legs. Sprinkle with 3 sprigs of chopped up rosemary, drizzle with some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Mix to ensure that everything is well coated. Move the chicken on top of the bread and roast in a 200C oven for about 45 minutes.

Drape 12 pancetta slices or some thin slices of bacon over the top of the bread and chicken and roast for a further 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Grind garlic (or roasted garlic) to taste with 4 anchovy fillets. Whisk in 75gm of grated parmesan and 1 tbspn of cream or creme fraiche. Add lemon juice and olive oil at a ratio of 1 tbspn lemon = 3 tbspn oil to taste. I added only 1 tbspn lemon and 3 tbspn oil to get maximum taste from only a small amount of dressing. Season if needed.

Place lettuce leaves, bacon, chicken and croutons on a plate and drizzle with the dressing.