Let Us Talk Lettuce

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Let Us Talk Lettuce

In this article: Ten Ways to Use Greens, and

Link to Great Greens Recipes:

Caesar Salad Dressing with Lime

And from Rachel of Coconut & Lime:

Spinach and Orzo

Rocket Pesto

First, what's wonderful about greens. (We’ll get to the overthinking later.) Fresh lettuces and greens are the tastes just what we hunger for in spring, after the heavy foods of winter.

It's the first crop of the year. It’s the seasonality, the crunch, delicacy, the vibrant green and — okay, I admit it — the peppery light bitterness of greens like arugula that we crave. Yum to the nth.

And in the summer, because greens are 90% water, they're cool and refreshing. They require little or no cooking. In fact, the less you do to them, the better. The cells of greens are fragile and break down rapidly. This is why they have to be dressed just before eating — lemon juice, vinegars, heat wilt greens quickly.

We visited Alison and Luke Howard at Homestead Farms for a peek at what’s growing in their greenhouses. This year’s greens are not your iceberg wedges. Homestead Farms is growing everything from beet greens to bok choy flowers, spinach to hakerui salad turnips.

Homestead Farm is currently harvesting (in May):

♦ Hakerui salad turnips
♦ Easter Egg Radishes
♦ Spicy spring mix which includes mizuna, mustard, kale and arugula
♦ Arugula
♦ Mustard Greens
♦ Kale

♦ Bok choi

♦ Spinach
♦ Spring Mix

More great greens to try:

♦ Lettuces: Oak leaf, baby red and green romaine.
♦ Mâche, Watercress, Frisee
♦ Arugula, radicchio, chicory, escarole, dandelion
♦ Pea shoots.
♦ Young beet greens, mustard greens, turnip greens.

10 ideas for greens:

So, what to do with the beautiful salad greens at the farmer’s markets? A few ideas:

♦ Arugula (or rocket or roquette), with its stronger taste, can be used like spinach — wilted into dishes at the last minute.

♦ Lightly chop arugula or radicchio and put on pizzas before baking/grilling.
♦ Lettuce wraps. Take a page from P.F. Chang’s. Lettuce wraps are one of their most popular dishes. Use broad leaves of cool lettuce to wrap savory fillings – nice contrast.
♦ Vegetarian sandwiches or any sandwich, for that matter. Craig Sewell of A Cook’s Café makes a dynamite “Roll in the Garden,” greens, veggies and a bit of local cheddar cheese in a veggie tortilla wrap.
♦ Pasta addition. Sauté stronger greens such as escarole and arugula in a little garlic and olive oil, toss with cooked pasta. Maybe add a little cream or parmesan. Wow!

Bok choi flowers, beautiful and deliciously edible.

♦ Lighten up a heavier salad, such as potato or egg salad with some chopped greens.
♦ Rice additions. Tonight, we’re having a Fried Rice “Primavera” with asparagus, baby bok choy, backyard bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms and crab.
♦ Experiment with oils. Beyond the range of olive oils out there, other oils can dramatically change a salad. Try walnut oil with greens, pears and gorgonzola. A few drops of chili oil mixed with olive oil, greens, jicama and orange for a southwest salad. You get the drift.
♦ Experiment with vinegars. Balsamic, of course, is lovely. Have you tried “white balsamic” vinegar? It’s fruity and light. In Maryland, Dragonfly Farms makes elegant vinegars from vinifera grapes. Try their with some local Firefly Farms chevre. Chefs are loving sherry vinegar these days, too.
♦ Greens in a simple broth. It’s so easy to wilt fresh spinach or escarole in a light broth. Wedding soup, pho, miso soup, minestrone...delicious.

Now, on to the overthinking.

Too much reading can almost destroy your appetite. Yes, even for something as innocent and pure as lettuce.

In her textbook “Much Depends on Dinner,” (1987) Margaret Visser devotes a wide-ranging chapter to lettuce – or lettuces, as my English grandmother used to say.

Lettuce, grown forever, may have been first collected as a bitter, wild herb. The seeds were used for oil. The debate raged for centuries about whether lettuce is an an-aphrodisiac. Apparently, the milky substance you see in lettuce leaf cores, for example, does contain a mild soporific.

Visser notes with disdain that lettuce is now (in 1987) the status food of the “Conspicuous Competent,” who believe in embracing this effete, historically “feminine” vegetable, the food primarily of the poor.

She explores, rightfully, the history of exploited farmworkers v. agribusiness in California, and the boycotts of grapes and lettuce. And how radiated food may someday make it all moot.

She is not alone in this politicization of lettuce. Note the arugula argument levied against our leadiers.

Yikes. Can’t we just like how it tastes?

Where to find fabulous greens.

Here's where your CSA subscription really pays off. But if you didn't subscribe this year, your local farmers markets are brimming over now with great greens. Here's a link to the Department of Ag's farmers market directory.

Interested in Homestead Farms certified organic greens? Here's their website, and they're currently at the Middletown, DE farmer's market on Saturdays. Their products are also served up at Out of the Fire in Easton.