Meet Ultimate Dressing

This remarkable concoction began life as a specialist. It was merely the World’s Best Caesar Dressing. And it still is. But what a shame to limit the application of this stuff to romaine lettuce! "It Shall Not Be So!" is the rallying cry and chief slogan of the Recipe Rangers. Our mission is to promote, provoke and propagate the application of what we modestly call Ultimate Dressing to all sorts of new gustatory adventures.

Keep some in the refrigerator for application to sandwiches — or just plain bread — at a very minimum. We have seen people use it to make fast food items (like breakfast sandwiches, for example) come to life. Oh, you can still apply it to salads, of course, but get crazy, get adventurous! Use it atop your favorite omelette. Lather it on hamburgers and hot dogs. You see where we’re going. In other words, enjoy it…widely! And wildly!

1-1/2 cups   ~~   extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup   ~~   freshly grated parmesan cheese
4-5   ~~  anchovies
8 cloves   ~~   fresh garlic, peeled and pressed (or 2 TBs of your favorite schmeer*)
juice of   ~~   1 lemon and 1 lime
1/3 cup   ~~  rice vinegar or to taste
1   ~~  egg
4 shakes   ~~  Worcestershire sauce
1 shake   ~~   Tabasco sauce
pepper  ~~  to taste

Throw everything into the blender and whip until smooth and creamy. Refrigerate. It’ll keep for a week or two, but you may have to whip it up once or twice if it separates. Best solution is to eat it first.

Tinkerers have been known to substitute romano for parmesan and anchovy paste for whole anchovies. They’ve also varied the amount of garlic, used limes instead of lemons, used wine vinegar instead of rice vinegar, experimented with adding minced fresh herbs and goodies like pine nuts. And some bump up the Zing Factor by increasing the Tabasco or adding a teaspoon or so of wasabi. A Recipe Rangers' motto (exasperating to some by-the-bookers) is “have at it”!

* Recipe Rangers in the West includes two handy ways to exploit the marvelous flavor and therapeutic synergy of garlic and extra virgin olive oil: Sweet Garlic Schmeer and and Power Garlic Schmeer. Schmeer, by the way, is a wonderful Yiddish word that means things that go well together.