With this post I’m starting a series called “Signature Dishes,” which will be a set of my most-used recipes and dishes. I’ll tell you ahead of time this first one is a bit weird, so I thought I’d get it out of the way early. It’s definitely not for everyone the way I make it, but it can be easily adjusted for a variety of more-normal tastes.
Death Salad
A vinegar-heavy salad with mixed textures and sharp flavors.
Every ingredient in this recipe is to-taste, but I will provide my portions to help start you off.
Ingredients
- Romaine lettuce – one large head or one bag of pre-shredded Romaine hearts
- Parmesan cheese, shredded – 1/2 cup
- Caesar-style croutons – 3/4 cup or 1-2 heavy shakes of the bag
- White vinegar – 1/2 cup
- Extra-virgin olive oil – 1/2 cup
- Worcestershire sauce – several dashes, up to 4 tsp. if you really like Worcestershire
- Minced garlic – 1-2 tsp.
- Coarse sea salt
- Ground black pepper
The way I make this is absurdly specific, down to things like always putting the garlic in before the pepper in order to keep my fork from transferring pepper into the garlic container. You do not have to do it that way if you have another preference.
Directions
- Add lettuce to a medium-large bowl.
- Toss in garlic, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.
- Put croutons on top.
- Pour olive oil and vinegar over the croutons.
- Scatter parmesan over the croutons and add salt.
I’ve since tried several times to find the original recipe that I based this salad on, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate it to give credit. When I was much younger I found a recipe for a Caesar salad in one of my mom’s cookbooks and decided to try it out. What I didn’t comprehend at the time was that it was a recipe for a salad, its dressing, and homemade garlic croutons.
What was supposed to happen was that I’d partially make the dressing from the salt, pepper, garlic, Worcestershire, and olive oil, then soak the croutons-to-be in it for a while. This would make spiced garlic-infused olive oil to be mixed with the vinegar for a strong vinaigrette to be tossed lightly in to individual servings of the final salad while the croutons dried out overnight.
What actually happened was that I added a full cup of vinegar along with all of the other ingredients to a bowl of lettuce and came away with an extremely strong salad dressing that pooled up in the bottom of the bowl – the feeling it gave me to eat is where its name comes from. I, not realizing that this wasn’t the intended result, ate the entire thing and actually drank the remaining dressing, which was a dubious decision at best. But, because my tastes have always been a touch bizarre, I actually found that I liked it quite well.
Over the following several years, I continued to make that salad in roughly the same way, but over time it gradually morphed into its current form. I’ve cut down the amount of vinegar by about half and added quite a bit more croutons to soak up the remaining dressing at the bottom, which helps a lot with the dish being too strong in general by dispersing the dressing more evenly.
I also eat this dish by myself – not least because no one I regularly interact with likes it – in two sittings since the vinegar lightly pickles the lettuce and helps it keep over the course of a couple of hours. But you can also serve it to others in smaller helpings, which provided that you toss it beforehand actually keeps the pungency under control quite neatly per-person. As I mentioned up at the beginning, this dish definitely isn’t for everyone, but it’s fast and cheap to make, and I’ve quite enjoyed it for a long time.
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