Chicano Caesar Salad | Desmond Mantle | TEDxClaremont McKenna College

the history of Caesar salad is one of the most unique histories of any dish it's a dish that went from a hodgepodge of random ingredients to something that we eat every day or every week it's something that you can find in your local Target or Trader Joe's or just about any other grocery store some convenience stores even have prepackaged Caesar salads you can add chicken or steak or shrimp to it it is one of the most versatile Foods but how did it come to be Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana Mexico now Tijuana is famous today for being right across the border from San Diego and it was famous for that too in the mid-1920s when Hollywood stars wanting to escape the restrictions of prohibition patronized Caesar cardini's restaurant to be able to drink alcohol Caesar cardini was Italian-American and he lived in San Diego but one of his restaurant locations was prominent it was there in Tijuana right in the center of town and available for American tourists to have what they wanted to eat critically his Cuisine there Incorporated his Italian identity his American identity and the location of the restaurant in Mexico making for a dish that incorporated all three of those National influences so now you might be thinking well how on Earth could it do that how many ingredients are even in a Caesar salad well it's more complicated than you might imagine Caesar salad starts out with your basic salad ingredients you've got romaine lettuce pretty typical lettuce you also have olive oil and balsamic vinegar from Modena the olive oil ideally is extra virgin now this is a pretty typical setup for a vinaigrette and a salad right you mix the vinegar and olive oil together you get some of that acidity some of that fat some of that delicious Savory flavor you put that on the salad and you have yourself something that's pretty good to eat and if it stopped there it wouldn't be a bad salad but Caesar salad has a lot more the next ingredients are citrus juices now this is the key place where Caesar cardini included the local Mexican influence you might know just how huge the Citrus industry in Baja California and California has been over the decades where we are right now in Claremont used to be Citrus Groves Citrus Groves were all the way down through the Pomona Valley the San Gabriel Valley large portions of Southern California and far Northwestern Mexico Citrus industry was huge in those locations and lemon and lime juice were readily available Cesar cardini probably used lime juice in his original version most of the days most of the times to these days we would use lemon juice but either way it adds some delicious acidity fruitiness to the dressing there's also either olive oil or coddled egg coddled eggs a preparation you might not have heard of before it's an egg that's partially heated to try to kill off some of the potential uh foodborne illnesses that might be in it mayonnaise is a safer option and that's what I use for my dressings next up we've got garlic garlic of course a quintessential Italian ingredient perhaps the most Italian influence in Caesar salad something with which Caesar cardini cooked just about all of his meals fresh garlic is ideal if possible but of course minced Jarred garlic will do the trick as well next up we've got Worcestershire sauce this one has a particularly interesting history it's essentially modeled on an ancient Roman fish sauce called garum uh now the pharmacist who invented it Leah and parents thought that garum tasted terrible because it does and they thought it smelled terrible because it does and so they decided to make a fish sauce that didn't smell terrible or taste terrible they aged their fish sauce for months and figured out that when they had finally aged it enough it tasted mellow and savory and delicious and they packaged it and created it as Worcestershire sauce Caesar cardini may have only used Worcestershire sauce in a large amount in his original dressing or he may have included anchovies we don't know for today what we do know is that a lot of chefs today disagree on whether to use anchovies or not I personally use anchovy paste I leave anchovy fillets available for guests who want to have those as well I personally tend to like them but Everyone likes to give different amount of fishiness in their dressing finally we've got the solid ingredients that go on top of the salad in addition to the dressing croutons ideally made with sourdough or sour rye bread and shaved not shredded parmesan you'll see a lot of Caesar salad with shaved Parmesan safe parmesan is proper shredded parmesan it's a little spindly can get too waterlogged don't use shaved Parmesan or rather don't use shredded parmesan use shea Parmesan for your Caesar salad now as I mentioned prohibition was a key Catalyst for the Americanization of Caesar salad because remember it was at the very beginning just limited to Tijuana if you wanted a Caesar salad you'd go to Tijuana to have Caesar cardini make it for you tableside and that was the way you did it is just what he had on hand one day when he invented it and he would continue making that for years later but eventually Hollywood star Errol Flynn who was known for his swashbuckling movies along with a number of other actors brought it to the U.S and popularized it greatly by 1964 as you can see from this news article Caesar salad was considered a national dish in the U.S on par with apple pie or pumpkin pie or a lot of other pies but the point is that Caesar salad had become something of a staple of American Cuisine and people didn't realize they were eating Mexican food it didn't have the sort of stigma attached to that people weren't expecting to find it at Mexican restaurants but there it is on an American menu served at diners served at steakhouses this one gives you a recipe for how to make it at your own home so why on Earth do I care about Caesar salad so much it starts with my step-grandfather Richard Morse now my step-grandfather very intelligent man and he was good at a number of different things but at the beginning cooking was not one of death his first wife tragically passed away due to cancer and afterward he did not want to eat the TV dinners that he would have been restricted to if he didn't know how to cook so he took cooking classes and he became a phenomenal cook someone whose food I loved eating we have his recipes for Yorkshire pudding and pineapple upside down cake but the very favorite thing that he used to make was Caesar salad now when I make Caesar salad I'm not only carrying on my Mexican-American identity through my mother's side of my family but also my step grandfather's identity through my father's side of my family in many ways both sides of my family contribute to my understanding and appreciation of this dish and I am incredibly grateful to my step grandfather for making the recipe that I use my family enjoys today as I mentioned is also ubiquitous in Cuisines across the U.S here's Buca di Beppo and ostensibly Italian restaurant with Caesar featured prominently there again Caesar goes just great with Italian food a lot of people think it's Italian and they're not wrong to the extent that an Italian-American invented it but it's not exclusively Italian similarly The Old Spaghetti Factory does a chicken Caesar salad the inspiration for the title of this talk Chicano Caesar salad and that's something you can have as a hearty meal right a chicken Caesar might be your entire entree but at steakhouses once again we see the Caesar salad makes an appearance at the Del Rey one of my favorite restaurants locally here down in Pico Rivera they do a tableside season the waiter comes up with all the different ingredients makes it all together for you puts it on your plate It's a Wonderful show experience in addition to being a great dressing and a great salad you also see the muso and Frank Grill perhaps my favorite restaurant a local Hollywood establishment it's been in operation for over a hundred years and their Caesar salad is legendary as well as you can see the American restaurants seem to think the Caesar salad is American just as much as the Italian restaurants seem to think the Caesar salad is Italian at a Mexican restaurant does it differently they decide to call it grilled chicken Mexican Caesar to which my response is there's no such thing as a Mexican Caesar Caesar salads are Mexican you wouldn't have to call it an Italian Caesar or an American Caesar and you shouldn't have to call it a Mexican Caesar either and what's even worse is that they don't make it as a Caesar salad they use a cilantro Pepita dressing which sounds delicious but it's not a Caesar it's not the Caesar salad that was invented at Caesar cardini's restaurant it doesn't have that combination of Mexican Italian and American influences that make a Caesar salad what it is so I told you a little bit about why I care about this but I didn't give you the full story yes it's true that my step-grandfather was a huge influence on me culinarily someone I was very proud to emulate every time I make my Caesar dressing and that is also true that the fact that the Caesar salad originated from Tijuana made me very proud of my Mexican heritage and the facts American or Italian I typically pass for fully white or maybe Italian Caesar salad is an inoffensive meal that you can add to just about anything and I'm usually not too offensive Caesar salad is different from other Mexican food right it stands in stark contrast to other Mexican dishes despite the fact that it has those culinary connections with the Citrus juice the salt and pepper often added to it sometimes Tabasco sauce in certain versions there are connections but it's different from the rest of Mexican Cuisine similarly I'm a Mexican-American person but I differ from just about every other Mexican-American person each of us is an individual we've all got individual stories and just as much as Caesar salad it's its own dish I am my own person Caesar salad also serves many purposes it's versatile you can have it as an appetizer as a side dish as your entree you can even have it after pasta but before a dessert you can have it for a lunch you could have some of the leftovers for breakfast it's very versatile you can use it for just about anything and I'm often asked to surf in a variety of different roles here on campus I was a part of a number of different groups I'm currently working at the alumni office I find that I am put to many uses for each community that I'm a part of and I love it I take it as a compliment about my ability to do that work but like Caesar salad I'm asked to be put into those different situations to adapt to improvise figure out how to best support the overall mission of the meal Caesar salad is also something that although sometimes forgettable or ignorable can be prepared tableside made into its own show I'm someone who can fade toward the background be quiet listen for hours on end not interrupt anything but here I am giving a tedx talk Caesar salad and I have a number of comparisons similarities things that make us analogous to one another so when I tell you so adamantly that Caesar salad is Mexican food it doesn't just carry the weight of me believing that that's a true factual historical statement it also carries the weight of me telling each and every one of you that I'm a Mexican-American person and that just the way the Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana and has all those other influences in it too I was born of a Mexican-American woman and a white father and that that makes me who I am along with the way that I was raised the way that I have become part of America just a Caesar salad went on its journey to become part of American Cuisine unfortunately sometimes in conversation stereotypes dominate our understanding of each of these cultures a lot of folks think of Mexico as a place with chilies and avocados and barakas and they think of America as the place with fast food and political differences and some very impressive racial diversity in people from all over the world but those stereotypes don't necessarily govern Caesar salad or me Caesar salad and I exist in a space between those Nations something where we can be thankful for our Mexican Origins and for our American popularity some place where we feel like both of those Nations have contributed to Who We Are now perhaps you might think I'm personifying Caesar salad a little bit too much that's fair but I think that each of us has a connection to culinary history that's worth noting here a question that I get all the time what are you people sometimes can tell that I'm not fully white I don't know exactly what gives it away but they sometimes figure it out and I get that question what are you now I could give a snarky response it'd be justified I could say I'm a human or I'm American and both of those would be true but these days I've taken to saying I'm like Caesar salad I'm like Caesar salad because my Origins are partially Mexican and partially American and partially a bunch of other things and because I try to adapt and to improvise and to fit whatever I'm able to do and I want you each to think about what you are I don't just mean your racial or ethnic composition I mean to think about the foods that you love and why you love them and why you might differ in opinion with people from your own racial or ethnic background about which foods you love and might you might agree with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds than your own about liking the same food I want you each time you pick up a new dish to eat to think about where it came from to think about all the different Global culinary influences that came together to make that dish what it is on the next time you eat Caesar salad or the next time you see me I want you to remember you're looking at something that's Mexican-American thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 227

Keywords: Culture, English, Family, Food, History, Identity, Life, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:53589]

Id: 66nxe6OyLrw

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023