Elsewhere I have contended that no one should be allowed to graduate from high school without knowing how to roast a chicken. To this modest proposal I will now add two codicils: the mixing of a proper martini and the making of a good Caesar salad. It would be nice, too, if high school graduates could read, write, and do arithmetic, and if they had come to an understanding that the true core of any worthy education is moral not vocational: Education is, or should be, about the vividness of life and our response to it, not just about getting a better job. But we can tilt at that windmill some other day.

A martini, a Caesar salad, and some roast chicken: Here we have the constituents of a perfect little dinner, an exercise in elegant simplicity. The Caesar, of course, is probably America's most popular salad; it turns up on menus at all sorts of restaurants and accepts embellishment – with grilled chicken or prawns, to name a pair of the usual suspects – gracefully. I often find myself ordering it just to gauge the variations: level of garlic, presence or absence of anchovies, nature of the cheese (grated, shaved?) and of the romaine leaves (whole, chopped?). But I have never been served one in somebody's home, and I have never made one in my own, until last week, when I found myself wondering what to do with a stray head of butter-leaf lettuce and a rump of week-old sourdough.

The old bread, naturally, when cut into cubes, tossed with some olive oil and salt, and toasted at 350 °F for about 10 minutes, became a clutch of lovely croutons. The last of a chunk of French Basque sheep's-milk cheese was easily shaved into slivers. The lettuce I chopped, washed, and spun; the anchovies I merely chopped. All this went into the big bowl to await the divine revelation of dressing.

Purists will want to consult Judy Rodgers's Zuni Café Cookbook for their recipe here. I did and was pleased with the results, though all we are really dealing with is a vinaigrette thickened by the whisking in of an egg and given an enhanced charge by chopped garlic and lemon juice. One's own taste must be the chief guide as to how much of either to include, if any. The truth is that other vinaigrettes can do quite nicely, even if made with balsamic or rice vinegar, even if there is no egg, garlic, or lemon. You might not get away with calling such a salad a Caesar, but you will certainly find the ingredients playing well together.

Paul Reidinger

paulr@sfbg.com