Important cooking advice especially pertinent for today...

Today is the Ides of March (March 15th), which made me think of Julius Caesar, which then made me think of Caesar Salad. That in turn brought to mind a cooking show I saw late one night many years ago on public access TV, in the days before multiple shows (or entire cable TV channels) dedicated to celebrity chefs and their cooking.

That night, this chef opened his show by discussing ways to add chicken to Caesar Salad. Grilled chicken is common, and you can get more adventurous than that, but above all the chicken MUST BE COLD! Never, ever put hot cooked chicken in a salad! This was very important to him. You can add fruit to the salad (like raisins or cranberries) to give it tang if you want but never, EVER do so by cooking chicken in a fruity sauce and then tossing it right into the salad.

Simply put, he declaimed: “I come to berry Chicken Caesar, not to braise it”.

Heh - that’s pretty bad. When you mentioned raisins it reminded me of the time I went out to eat and the chef put golden raisins in the salad. I don’t recall what the dressing was, but the golden raisins reconstituted themselves and they looked just like big shiny boogers.