Crab Cobb Salad

I think salads can be kind of boring, which is why I think most people as a rule don’t want to eat “just a salad” (cue Seinfeld voice…just a salad. Just a salad. Anyway…). I think the flaw in the salad-shunner’s reasoning is that they’re boring. Too healthy. To blah. I think the anti-saladers just lack inspiration, and I posit that the greens they are eating probably just don’t have enough toppings. You know I love toppings. Which is why Cobb salads are pretty much perfect. It’s like…ALL TOPPINGS. And this Crab Cobb Salad? Chef’s kiss.

The Cobb salad is named for Robert Cobb, who threw this together in a last-minute, late night effort at his restaurant, The Brown Derby of Hollywood fame.   While there is a “standard” Cobb, the spirit of the original suggests you can use whatever your heart fancies, or your kitchen yearns to discard. It’s also not so much the ingredients that matter, but how they’re presented- neatly lined up in rows atop the lettuce.

My original idea was to combine this with another popular West Coast salad, the Crab Louis, a crab salad topped with what seemed similar to Thousand Island. However, I couldn’t be sold on the dressing, so this Cobb stays a Cobb with crab in place of turkey or chicken. It makes a BIG salad, so get ready to eat heartily. I also don’t have an egg on this because I’ve really been OD’d on the eggs lately, but for something a bit more traditional, throw on that hard boiled.