Almost Caesar salad

Actually its almost caesar and part waldorf (a very small part though)!

My home is overflowing with good cooks giving me little reason to venture into the kitchen. But, I do miss my erst while experiments with food. Which? All of it...all of the posts on Timid Cook are my experiments.

Yesterday, I shook off my lethargy (difficult but I did it) - opted for a caesar salad variation, drew up a ingredient list and went shopping Sunday morning and tried it out Sunday night! And it wasn't half bad. Ma liked it. (Which is a big compliment)! So here it is -

You will need:

• 1 head Romain lettuce, torn - I found "lettuce" at the Spencers on Rash Behari Avenue and didn't quite mind that this was iceberg and not romaine!


• 4 slices of bacon, diced - I was more liberal here and went a wee bit overboard. Much more than 4 slices (but in this case, more is really merrier)!


• 2-3 thick slices of good hard bread, cubed. [I looked for the easy way out ... but couldnot find any croutons] 4 tbsp parmesan cheese grated. In the end, I didnot use any cheese, parmesan or other - the dressing sans cheese was quite heavy.

For the dressing:

• 2 tbsp Mayo (I used a low cal eggless one ... alas am allergic to eggs)


• 400gs Yogurt (Two 200g tubs of mother diary yogurt - actually 300 g is fine. One tub and half of the other)


• 1 fat garlic crushed - but I simply grated it over the bowl where I was making the dressing.


• 1 tsp mustard powder (recipe calls for dijon...anything at hand will do, I guess)


• 1 large lemon juiced


• A few liberal dashes of Worcestershire sauce


• 1/4 cup olive oil

How to:

1. Wash and dry lettuce and tear it into bite sized pieces. Put in a bowl and set aside.


2. In a pan, fry diced bacon in their own fat, remove and then fry the bread cubes in this fat.


3. I toasted 4 slices of bread till crispy. Cubed them with a bread knife and then lightly tossed them into the bacon fat. Set aside. Or omit this step and use croutons.


4. Combined all the ingredients for dressing a plastic container with a lid. Whipped well using a knife.


5. To serve, pour over salad, garnish with fried bread cubes!

PS - If you find good thick greek yoghurt, lucky you. If you dont, then use any normal unflavored yoghurt. To strain, I set a metal sieve onto a pan. Lined the sieve with a muslin cloth - actually a square of an old cotton sari belonging to ma; the poured the yoghurt on to the cloth and left it there. Within 1 hour or so, the water had nicely drained out and the yoghurt was easily lifted using a spoon from the cloth.

I toasted 4 bread in a toaster till crispy. Cubed them with a knife. Then tossed them into the pan where I fried the bacon. An easier alternative could be a packet of croutons?!

PS - The two recipes inspired me to make my own melange salad. Caesar & Waldorf.