Serendipity leads to a splendid salad
Some dishes have charming back stories but the food itself isn't up to much. Then there are the plates that are delightful to look at and eat but have no story to tell.
Cobb salad has it all.
As the tale goes, in 1937, Robert Cobb, then owner of the popular Hollywood hangout the Brown Derby, headed for his restaurant kitchen late one night looking for a snack. He found iceberg lettuce, romaine and watercress leaves, ripe avocado, juicy tomatoes, cooked chicken breast, a hard-cooked egg, creamy Roquefort, and salad dressing. He grabbed some bacon from a busy chef and started chopping. A friend, Sid Grauman, of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, joined him for the midnight meal. Soon after, Grauman returned to the restaurant and requested ``Cobb salad."
Unlike the Caesar, with its anchovies and Parmesan cheese, or the nicoise, with its flakes of imported tuna and French olives, the Cobb contains rather ordinary ingredients. It can be tossed or presented as a ``composed" salad, in which the greens and garnishes are arranged on a plate. That might mean a bed of greens on the bottom , topped with neat rows of chicken cubes, crumbled bacon and blue cheese, slices of avocado and tomato, and hard-cooked eggs. Other salads forgo the rows and form a pie wedge design.
Over the years, Cobb salad has morphed into a fancy dish, based on the chef's whim. Iceberg has been replaced by organic baby greens; duck, steak, lobster, or crabmeat sits where chicken once did; fine cheeses, fresh herbs, and unusual dressings are now in the mix.
At Bambara in Cambridge's Hotel Marlowe, the Cobb features sliced grilled steak. Executive chef Nathan Powers inherited the salad from the chef who preceded him and didn't change anything, he says, because ``the lunch crowd loves it." The steak is a ``shoulder tender" cut, which is indeed tender. Powers is a big fan of serving steak with salad rather than mashed potatoes at the midday meal.
His version, he admits, is ``a little busy." The bowl is packed with Boston lettuce dressed with a tarragon vinaigrette and topped with egg, avocado, roasted plum tomatoes, bacon, and crumbled Roquefort, in addition to the steak and a handful of caramelized cipollini onions. ``It's a lot of food," adds the chef, and most guests don't finish it.
Cobb swings easily from the lunch table to the brunch menu. Ever since Union Bar and Grille opened for weekend brunch, the South End spot has offered the salad. Chef Stephen Sherman thinks it's appealing because it's substantial, it's fairly healthy, and it offers an option that isn't eggs (although it includes them) .
Rather than serve out-of-season tomatoes on the salad, Sherman, like Powers, roasts plum tomatoes to intensify their sweetness. And since a ready supply of ripe avocados seemed too iffy to depend on, the Union chef uses thinly sliced Granny Smiths. He thinks the chicken is the most important element; his is cold-smoked and grilled. The dish is then garnished with crisp bacon and local Great Hill Blue from Marion.
On the other end of the spectrum are salad s that takes a sharp turn from the traditional. Joshua
An amusing little addition to his plates are magenta-colored eggs that have been stained with pickled beet juice. ``The pickled eggs add a little bite," says Hollinger, which complements the rich duck.
It seems the Cobb lends itself to an element of surprise. Restaurateur Stephanie Sokolove presents the salad in a crispy flour tortilla shell at Stephanie's on Newbury. ``It brings some crunch," she says. The tortilla assumes the role that croutons play in other salads. Sokolove also adds roasted corn and tosses all the ingredients together .
The famous dish with the charming story was created from odds and ends, and it can be personalized even more according to whim or necessity. So do as you please. What's in your fridge?
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
