I make food. I take pictures.

I’m sure many North American expats can agree on one thing: a good Caesar salad dressing is really hard to find in the rest of the world. Whether it’s too sweet, too flat, too oily, too watery or too much like Ranch, they all seem to taste pretty terrible.

Now when we lived in New Brunswick, Caesar salad meant some romaine lettuce (if we were lucky) tossed with Kraft Caesar dressing. Special occasions meant that maybe we’d get a salad kit with powdered, dandruffy parmesan, and bacon bits (facon, really, they’re made from soy). Caesar Cardini was far from our minds.

Fortunately for us, a good family friend of ours exposed us to the wonders of a home-made Caesar dressing. The only downside to her dressing was that it was the real deal (ha!)… meaning it had anchovies and raw egg in it. Try as I might, I don’t think I’ll ever become a fan of dried anchovies.

After moving to the Netherlands and suffering through brand after brand of crappy Caesar dressing (Remia and Calve), not to mention terrible house dressings in restaurants (I remember a particularly scarring experience in London), we gave up on Caesar salads completely for at least a year. It was a bleak time.

Then I found this recipe. Great stuff really–the use of mayo eliminated the need for raw egg, and even though it called for anchovies, the recipe still tasted good without it. Best of all, for those watching their waist lines, you can still indulge in a Caesar salad–just use light mayo, and go easy on the cheese and bacon, and skip the croutons.

This dressing’s been a family favourite for a few years now, because it’s so easy to throw together and tweak until it’s just right.