Venus Rising

Food for SoulIssue: Taurus 10

The Season for Lettuce

Watercolor by Philip GaligaLettuce is easy to grow and quick to harvest, providing extremely fresh and tasty salads early in the growing season. Planting a variety of lettuces with successive plantings every 1 to 3 weeks will keep you stocked in greens for months.

The word salad is derived from the French word salade, meaning salt, and describes early uses of wild lettuce. Salted and packed tightly together, wild leaves were served prior to a main meal. Ancient Romans ate green salads too, using early types of Romaine lettuce. The Italians dressed their salads with vinegar and oil. Italians eat salad at the end of a meal because of the vinegar, which would ruin the taste of the wine accompanying the meal. The French have favored serving salad at the beginning of a meal because, as a salted, cured vegetable, it was slippery and easy to assimilate thus leaving room for the heavier food to follow.

Americans developed their own love affair with salads, most notably in the form of fair colored versions made wholly of Iceberg lettuce. Iceberg is a type of Crisphead lettuce, of which there are several variations. In the 1930s basic Crisphead was dubbed Iceberg when the sturdy heads were packed in ice to travel cross country and arrive crisp when reaching its destination. Clever marketers advertised people anxiously awaiting produce train cars carrying the ice packed lettuce and hollering “the icebergs are coming.” Simultaneously, a culinary trend of neatly presented dishes was sweeping the States. Famous chefs and trendy housewives did not merely toss a pile of lettuce on a plate for the dinner salad but needed to arrange lettuce and other vegetable into tidy presentations. With this rule of thumb salads like the Iceberg wedge, with a quarter of a head of the namesake lettuce, crumbled blue cheese, creamy blue cheese dressing and a parsley garnish became the stalwart at steak houses and has had a renaissance in the last few years. Other salads, such as the Cobb and Chef were also creations of trendy presentations.

As the standard bearer of American salads, Iceberg has been the predominate “green” found in supermarkets for most of the last century. In the late 60’s a market for healthier, brighter, more flavorful and unusual greens sprang up, especially for salad bars. With more nutritional value than Iceberg, Green Leaf, Red Leaf and Romaine became more popular. By the mid 80’s Mesclun, a well-known French ensemble of baby greens became favored in the U.S. Traditionally containing young Green Leaf, Chervil, Rocket and Endive, Americans could get a dumbed down version of less exotic greens, with an abundance of baby loose leaf varieties such as Oakleaf, Red Oak, and Green Leaf. Stateside versions also contain young Chicory, Radicchio, and Dandelion Greens and now can be found pre-washed and ready to eat in nearly every grocery store.

Lettuce can be categorized into four distinct groups. Crispheads form firm heads with crisp texture. Butterheads also form a head but it is soft and pliable. Looseleaf forms leaf bunches and regrows after being cut. Cos grows upright, with tall stiff leaves that appear tough but are tender to eat, this category would include Romaine. There are still other greens making a play in markets and starring in restaurant salads, including Watercress, the most ancient known green. It has a sharp peppery taste and grows near water. When planning your garden, work in Watercress planted in clay pots that sit in water. Make sure to keep the water clean and clear for healthy successful cress. Also consider Frisée, the curly pale green lettuce that will add a lacey visual component to salad. Try these varieties along with a standard loose leaf, some of which are more heat tolerant than Butterheads or Crispheads. But by all means try the latter lettuces too, they provide a good base for salads and, if you keep the ground they grow in consistently moist they will likely stay strong on all but the hottest of days.