Per My Last Recipe.
The pepper steak salad photo standing in for a Caesar-ish salad (test photo)
Test Caesar-Ish Salad
Salads

Test Caesar-Ish Salad

This fake salad claims two categories, Salads first and Appetizers second, so its card kicker should say Salads while it shows up under both chips in the catalogue.

Hutch
Jump to Recipe

The Caesar-ish salad is the corpus diplomat: it lives in two categories at once, Salads by birth and Appetizers by invitation, and its whole job is to make sure the site handles divided loyalties gracefully. Its kicker should say Salads. It should wave from both chips in the catalogue. It should cause no arguments.

Ish is doing a lot of work here

There is no anchovy in this dressing and the croutons are, by the recipe’s own admission, pretend. A real Caesar is a specific and wonderful thing; this is a salad in its orbit — romaine, a garlicky creamy dressing, parmesan in shards, crunch on top. The -ish is not an apology. It is a label doing its job.

Salad components laid out, standing in for the Caesar-ish mise en place

If this salad ever graduates from test duty, it will get real croutons — torn sourdough, olive oil, a hot oven, too much garlic. Until then, it stands at its post, in two categories at once, holding the wiring together.

The Recipe

Test Caesar-Ish Salad

A fake salad that lives in two categories, checking the kicker and both chips.

Total
15 min
Serves
2
Save recipe

Ingredients

Cook Mode Big steps · screen stays awake

Instructions

  1. 1 Make the dressing first: whisk the fake Caesar dressing with a squeeze of lemon and a grated clove of garlic until it looks like it knows what it is doing. Taste it on a leaf, not a spoon — dressing always tastes stronger off a spoon than it does on the salad it was built for.
  2. 2 Tear or chop the romaine into pieces you can actually eat in one bite. Wash it, then dry it like you mean it: a spinner, then a towel. Water left on the leaves is the number one killer of Caesar anything, because dressing slides off wet lettuce and pools sadly at the bottom of the bowl.
  3. 3 Add half the dressing and toss with your hands, lifting from the bottom, until every leaf has a sheen and none is drowning. Add the croutons and toss once more, briefly, so they pick up dressing without going soft.
  4. 4 Shave the parmesan over the top in the biggest pieces your peeler allows. Serve immediately, in cold bowls if you planned ahead, which in this test kitchen we always pretend we did.

December 12, 2026

Filed under: Salads · Appetizers · test · salad

Keep cooking
A steaming bowl of tomato soup (test photo from the site library)
Test Kitchen Tomato Soup
Berry drinks in glasses, borrowed from the web for this test post
Test Stand Lemonade