The Wedge

King Daddy and I were having a discussion about 1950s food the other day. Who didn’t love the “salad” with a pear half, cottage cheese plopped in the middle and shredded Cheddar cheese dusting the top? Or Chicken A La King, which has actually been around since the turn of the last century but reached its zenith, on toast points, in the ’50s. Or the Wedge. My beloved Wedge.

Behold the iceberg lettuce, kicked to the curb in the last two decades as being bland and not very nutritional. There was no mesclun salad mix when Ike was president. Sissy food, I’m sure he might have thought. You practically have to chase the stuff around the plate just to get a forkful. Flimsy. And if you dress it too soon, it just wilts under the slightest pressure. Who needs that.

Iceberg is sturdy and crunchy and a wedge of it is the perfect platform for a lovely blue cheese dressing, crispy bacon and croutons. You know you want the Wedge right now, along with a Pat Boone record and a couple of I Love Lucy episodes on DVD. There’s a reason it’s showing up on chef’s menus all over the country today. It was good then and it’s good now.

The Wedge deserves only the best blue cheese dressing, and I have a quibble with the bottled kind.  It’s too sweet. And it’s so easy to make you’re own without having to deal with all the processed crud in bottled salad dressing.

So go forth and create the Wedge. Back to the Future.