Today I took the culinary road trip out West for one of my personal favorites, a Cobb Salad from page 361.
I had never known that the Cobb salad originated in the West. Back in the days I worked on Wall Street, I used to order the Cobb salad from a popular chain restaurant that shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. I had no enthusiasm for this particular chain, but it was close to my job and I had friends who liked to go there for the watered down drinks after work. The description in the menu always cited the avocados as part of the dish, and as you might be able to tell from how much I use them, I love avocados! The first time I ordered it, there were no avocados, so I told the waiter that there was a mistake, his reply was a curt “We’re out of avocados.” So I said I wanted to order something else – the waiter stormed off angrily to the kitchen and returned with a small cup of avocados that he slammed down on the table in disgust! After that I’d always order the Cobb salad there and we’d always play out the exact same scene – it became a kind of twisted game! I figured it out rather quickly, you see, that avocados are somewhat pricy and the restaurant must have had a policy not to use them, even in the dishes that were supposed to have them. Most people must have not cared, or have been too drunk after their third huge watered down cocktail to notice — but not me, I would fight tooth and nail for that avocado each and every time I ate there! Hey, if I order steak at a restaurant, I don’t want them to charge me for it but give me a big plate of red beans because that’s a cheaper way to do business and in principle the avocados in my Cobb salad is the same thing. Ah, what delightful memories I have of that place!
This salad is delicious and simple to make while also being attractive enough to serve at a dinner party. Martha mentions that in the spirit of the original salad named for Robert Cobb of Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant — where he created it for late night service using leftovers — we should feel free to improvise the ingredients based upon what we have in our kitchens. That’s pretty much what I do with most of these recipes, as I use them for inspiration while also bending them to my taste, budget and ingredient availability. I didn’t have watercress, so I left that out and I added some sliced mushrooms – but you can be sure I used plenty of avocados!
