In this episode we explore the growth that can occur from the mistakes and mishaps in our life and prepare a classic Caesar Salad recipe. Together, we celebrating the 100 year anniversary of this recipe and the innovative spirit and ingenuity that inspired its creation.
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Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods, and today we're going to be celebrating mistakes and accidents. Yes, you heard me right. We're going to be talking about the things that go wrong and give thanks to them, because it's often in those moments where we find ourselves on the path to what's unimaginably right.
And we're going to do this while preparing an absolutely fabulous Caesar salad. It happens to be the 100th anniversary of its creation, and it was, in fact, invented under similar circumstances. A spontaneous moment of pressure that catalyzed a long standing and treasured recipe.
Legends are made of these types of stories. You know what I mean, where there's the passionate pursuit of a dream, some misfortune or mistake that one comes to face, and the resolve, ingenuity and hustle that transforms that experience into something very, very powerful. In those moments, the mistake or misfortune isn't just an obstacle that left the person undeterred, but rather it was actually an ingredient in their success. That pressure was imperative.
There was some chatter on the internet around July 4, acknowledging that it was 100 year anniversary of the Caesar salad, and when I read about its history, I realized that it was an example of one of those things that was created on the fly in a moment of necessity. As the story goes, there was an Italian immigrant living in Tijuana, Mexico taking advantage of prohibition and people's desire to come across the border to have a little fun. He did not anticipate the amount of traffic he was going to see on that July 4 holiday. And when he found himself overwhelmed with customers, he had to spontaneously come up with some food based on whatever he had on hand, and that was the birth of the Caesar salad.
And as I imagine this gentleman named Caesar Cardini hustling to create something then and there for his customers, I'm struck not only by the way he solved the problem that day, but by the longstanding impact of what he created. These types of inventions are what makes the world that we experience so interesting.
And it got me thinking about the difference between being in a bind and creating an opportunity. First off, there's a certain amount of optimism that's required to sort of transform a challenge into something positive. I don't think it's possible to do that if you're focused on the negatives.
Because these moments happen spontaneously and unexpectedly, there's often a focus on being very present in the moment. There isn't any time for analysis paralysis.
There's also a level of humility that's intertwined with that hustle, the willingness to do the work. So as we recognize the importance of happy accidents in our lives, we're going to prepare a recipe for a Caesar salad that's super simple.
The backbone of an awesome Caesar salad is fresh lettuce, a homemade dressing and hand cut croutons. While making those things from scratch might seem like overkill, I promise you, it will elevate your salad from sort of mediocre to absolutely fabulous and it does not take very much time.
So we're going to start by preparing the romaine lettuce. Take each individual leaf and wash them one by one under cool water. Then put them in a bowl and tear the leaves apart with your hands. Add water to that bowl to soak them and then drain them really well, preferably spinning them dry.
While the lettuce leaves are soaking, I'm going to prepare our croutons. These are actually more like a crostini than a crouton. I'm using a leftover baguette. I’m going to slice the bread thin and place it on a baking sheet doused with some oil. I like to use olive oil, and then I sprinkle the bread slices with salt. If you prefer more traditional crouton, cut the bread into cubes. Now I like to take this bread that's now been doused with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and place it in the air fryer. You could also do this in the oven. Let the bread cook until it's golden brown, and then turn over the bread, add a little bit more oil and salt and pop it back into the air fryer. I swear this takes less than 10 minutes, and if you want, you can do this in advance. Once that bread is toasted, it will last for days.
The last step is to make our dressing. I begin my dressing with a raw egg yolk. I realize that this may be controversial, but it's pretty standard in mayonnaise or in aioli, and I think it's worth taking the risk. If you're concerned about the raw egg, you can put that bowl with the yolk over a double boiler and just let it heat up to kill any potential pathogens.
So take your bowl with the egg yolk and add the juice of about a half of a lemon and a smidge of Dijon mustard, and just whisk that up. Now we're going to stream into that bowl very slowly, olive oil, whisking constantly. A little trick is to add a towel under the bowl so that it doesn't spin around while you're whisking. I added maybe a quarter cup of oil in total. Then add a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and about a teaspoon of anchovy paste. Lastly, add in some grated parmesan cheese, a little bit of salt and pepper and taste it. I'm obsessed with this dressing.
If you want more anchovy flavor, you can use whole anchovies. You could chop them up and add them to your salad.
Now I take this dressing and I drizzle it on top of my dried romaine lettuce leaves that we've cleaned. Then I take a peeler, one that I would use to peel carrots or potatoes, and I peel shards of parmesan cheese into that salad. And then I top in some of those crostini or croutons, to give it some really great crunch.
While today's episode was inspired by the legend of Caesar Cardini and his Caesar salad that went on to become a culinary staple, not all happy accidents are so grandiose. Many of the challenging moments that we're faced with are quieter and may just impact us or our children or our partners or our friends. And those happy accidents are every bit as relevant and important. We may not be creating a legend, but we are creating our character, and we are shaping our environment.
How many times have you thought back to an experience that, at the time was challenging, but in hindsight, you said I wouldn't have it any other way, or you said, yeah, that was difficult, but if it wasn't for that moment, X or Y wouldn't have happened.
So much of our experiences comes down to how we frame them and how we can integrate them with other moments in our lives to see their interactivity.
I think back to when I was married, and the circumstances of that relationship where I had to leave as a young mother with a 12 month old baby, and that was one of those pressure points. It was a huge turning point in my life where I took accountability for my choices and I worked on healing and making better ones, knowing full well that how I approached that inflection point would be critical to my son's well being. And now, 14 years later, I can look at that situation with such gratitude, not for what it was, but for what I became and how it transformed my entire life and my entire sense of self.
Just recently, I had this vacation plan with my boyfriend. We were going to Mexico and gonna have this fantastic trip until hurricane Beryl came barreling down upon the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving us high and dry in terms of our vacation plans. And while that might have left a younger version of me disappointed, I know too well that misadventures are often the catalyst for even better experiences. So when life gives you lemons, make something from it. Be inspired by the spirit of Caesar Cardini and enjoy this fabulous salad, getting a taste of what could be created when you least expect it. Until our next episode, I say, so long.
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