This is what I call – after a menu in the food court of an LA shopping mall – a Caesar salad with chicken in it. Best of all the chicken will have been grilled or griddled before being roughly shredded for the salad, but it’s not obligatory. Since I seem to spend half my life teetering on the edge of a low-carbohydrate diet, I never put croutons in a Caesar salad (no hardship: I don’t like them much anyway), but this is rather wonderful with the avocado. Yes, I know that once you’ve added chicken and avocado and dispensed with the croûtons and, as I also seem to have done, the anchovies, this is has absolutely no right at all calling itself any sort of Caesar salad, but you don’t get to give a recipe a name like this that often, and I’m not passing it up now.
Of course, if you quite properly want to add anchovy, then just pound one soaked and drained salt-preserved little fish to a mush with the egg yolk when you start making the dressing – which again does not quite follow the normal procedures but does a very good job of its own; the chicken, after all, makes for a heavier salad, which requires in turn, a more creamily emulsified dressing.
2 cos lettuce hearts or 1 cos lettuce
1 egg yolk
2–3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
juice of half a smallish lemon
few drops Lea & Perrins
3 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan
1 cold, cooked chicken breast, preferably grilled
half an avocado (optional)
Tear the lettuce into large chunks and arrange on a plate. Mix up the dressing by whisking the egg yolk in a bowl and carry on whisking as you add the oil slowly. Whisk again adding the lemon juice and Lea & Perrins and pour over the lettuce, then toss well, preferably with your hands, so that all the leaves are coated. Sprinkle over 2 tablespoons of the parmesan and toss again. Cut the chicken into fat strips and add to the salad, along with the sliced avocado half, if you’re using it. Toss again, then sprinkle over the final tablespoon of parmesan.
Serves 2.