Caesar BLT

A BLT wants for nothing, but, like a bored emperor, it can still expand its dominance by conquering new realms. I'd argue that of all the possible conquests a classic bacon, lettuce, and tomato can make, the incorporation of the savory, briny, salty flavors of a Caesar salad is one of the most devastatingly delicious. The result is admittedly an umami kick to the tongue, but in a good way—it's a wild ride on a rocket to flavor-space.

You start with all the BLT basics: toasted sandwich bread, smoky, crispy bacon, refreshing and crunchy lettuce (except here, in honor of the Caesar, we let romaine take the place of iceberg), and juicy, sweet summer tomatoes. But now you power that up with briny anchovies, forming the culinary equivalent of a political marriage between empires. Do you, bacon of the land, take anchovies—the bacon of the sea—to be your lawfully wedded power-partner? Yes, yes we do.

Because this whole exercise is about reaching utter flavor-dominance over the lands, we don't stop there. We add shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano for a sweet-salty blast of umami and replace regular mayonnaise with dollops of Caesar mayo, which is really just a thicker Caesar dressing packed with more Parm, anchovies, black pepper, and Worcestershire. (Note, though, that I offer the option in the recipe of using regular mayo; it won't be the same, but there's enough going on in this sandwich that switching to plain mayo isn't going to ruin anything.) The Caesar mayo, anchovies, and Parm add a lot of salt to this sandwich, so I don't recommend salting the tomatoes as we would for a regular BLT—you need them to cut the salt, not add to it.

The real power play that turns this sandwich into more than just a lazy BLT twist is what I do with the sandwich bread: I encrust one side of each slice in a cracker-crisp frico shell of golden Parmigiano-Reggiano, creating a perfectly crouton-like cheesy-bread bite.

Could this sandwich replace a BLT? No, never—it has too strong of a personality for that. But when you want to gild the royal-sandwich lily, this is the move.