Nigella’s Caesar salad ‘a crime against cooking’
PLONKING a fried egg on top of baked lettuce leaves, Nigella Lawson breezily announced her creation was a “riff on Caesar salad”.
But her bizarre twist on the classic dish proved considerably harder for her viewers, and some fellow chefs, to swallow.
“A crime against cooking” was among the less flattering descriptions posted on Twitter by viewers left struggling to digest what they had just witnessed.
And the Michelin star winner, JeanChristophe Novelli, suggested she should have just called it “baked lettuce with an egg”.
Lawson, 55, roasted half a lettuce in the oven with garlic, olive oil lemon zest and anchovies, topped it with a fried egg and parmesan cheese shavings, then served it with a slice of toast for her take on the dish during Monday night’s episode of Simply Nigella on BBC2.
A Caesar salad usually contains crisp lettuce leaves, croutons, parmesan, a creamy dressing and a topping of chicken, bacon or sometimes egg.
During the show, Lawson said: “There are those who believe that to fiddle in any way with a classic recipe is an act of desecration. Well, it’s not a dishonourable stance, but it is a flawed one. The classics, in food as in literature, are the very forms that can withstand and indeed spawn a plethora of interpretations.
“Anyway, I can’t apologise for taking liberties with a Caesar salad when the outcome is so pleasurable. I suppose this riff in a way is like a culinary joke but it is so seriously good,” she said. But few were laughing after seeing it. Novelli, 54, said: “Anyone who has trained as a professional chef, who has been taught about the classics, and I believe the Caesar salad is a classic, knows that you do not change it. People remember the texture of this dish, it’s crunchy. You do not change that.”
Many viewers agreed. On Twitter, one 300g frozen strawberries or mixed frozen berries 125ml castor sugar 1 egg white
Put the strawberries into a processor and process until roughly chopped.
Add the sugar and pulse a few times to mix well.
Add the egg white and process until a thick creamy ice cream forms.
Serve immediately or spoon into a suitable container and store in the freezer. said: “Deconstruction gone mad on Simply Nigella. I switched off after watching this crime against cooking.”
Another added: “Think Nigella’s lost it. She just baked a lettuce with anchovies, put a fried egg on top and called it a dish.”
Simply Nigella represents the chef ’s comeback to the BBC. It follows a difficult few years in which she was divorced from Charles Saatchi and gave evidence in a trial during which she admitted taking cocaine.
After the first episode of the show, Lawson was criticised for kicking off with a “recipe” for avocado on toast. One disappointed viewer of the show joked on social media that “she’ll be teaching us how to make a cuppa next”.
Her breakfast bars from the second episode were criticised for including expensive ingredients such as goji berries and chia seeds. – Daily Mail