The key ingredient: lettuce

With apologies to M.F.K. Fisher, I ask you to consider the lettuce; it should never be an afterthought. Heirloom varieties with names such as Flashy Lightning, Tango, Devil’s Tongue or Tom Thumb – and their dramatic shapes and textures – are deserving of your full attention. Even iceberg, cut in wedges with crumbled bacon, maple-fried red onions and a buttermilk-chive dressing, warrants more than just a passing glance.

Egyptians cultivated lettuce from 2600 BCE, initially using its seeds for oil (good for balding after an illness, apparently) and subsequently taming the leaves’ bitterness for a food crop. They arranged it in bouquets for decorating tombs and it was sacred to the fertility god Min because of its milky juice, reminiscent of, well, you know.

Little could they have imagined that in October last year, a branch of Tesco would hang a mock blue plaque denoting a place of historical interest inscribed with the words: “A lettuce purchased here in September 2022 lasted longer than Prime Minister Liz Truss (49 days)”.

Or that in the 1600s CE, diarist John Evelyn would write, “By reason of its soporigous quality, lettuce ever was, and still continues the principal foundation of the universal tribe of Sallets, which is to cool and refresh, besides its other properties… including beneficial influences on morals, temperance, and chastity.”

Tribal lettuce in a ‘sallet’ can be as red as lipstick, or 50 shades of green. You can dress it up or down to be a trophy wife or the girl next door. The little black dress of salad dressings is a vinaigrette, but the new hussy on the block wears something from Ixta Belfrage’s cookbook, Mezcla: mix 60g olive oil, ½ tsp fine sea salt, 40g lime juice, 20g good maple syrup and ½ tsp toasted sesame oil. Toss with a couple of baby gem lettuces, about 15g mixed herbs (chives, basil, coriander, mint), and a green chili and a spring onion, chopped well. Embellish with toasted sesame seeds, sprinkled lavishly.

Little gems and cos nearly always prefer the bold and the beautiful, and when I want something cheeky, I want Caesar. A proper Caesar salad gets its swagger from anchovies. Lots of them. It does NOT accessorise with bacon or chicken.

For enough salad for four people, mash up a small clove of garlic with about six or seven anchovies. A little coarse salt helps the side of your knife rough them up. Whisk in (or whizz in a jar or jug, using an immersion blender) a raw egg yolk or two (the emulsifier) and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice – never vinegar – and just under a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Keep whisking and slowly add about three tablespoons of olive oil and then another quarter to a third cup of a neutral vegetable oil like canola. Toss in about a quarter of a cup of finely grated, salty Parmigiano Reggiano and lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Adjust those flavours as you see fit. Toss with garlicky croutons and a head of cos. Top with a little more of the grated cheese and take a selfie with it.

As spring approaches, your garden should be producing enough leaves to have a series of salads on rotation: apple with blue cheese and a garlicky-red-wine vinaigrette; pear with rocket, fennel, Pecorino and toasted pecans; niçoise; spinach with strawberries, avocado, more pecans and a poppy-seed dressing made with olive oil, cider vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and honey.

The best thing about lettuce, though, is its versatility. Look to the east and use lettuce in rice-paper summer rolls with coriander, mint, basil, vermicelli noodles and a protein of your choice. Dip in a hoisin peanut sauce or Vietnamese nuoc cham. Form lettuce cups to scoop up minced Thai beef or cumin-scented lamb with peanuts, or larb, the delicious chicken-and-herb mince from Laos. My hands-down favourite use of the lettuce cup is for the takes-all-day-but-so-worth-it Korean proposition that is Momofuku’s Bo Ssam.

While the idea of cooking with lettuce may be counter-intuitive, a pea and mint soup made with butter, spring onions and good stock with a crowning spoonful of crème fraiche is spring in a bowl.

Toss it sliced into stir-fries, or bow to Nigel Slater’s braised lettuce, which he likens to eating silk, by letting lettuce, bacon, leeks and peas do the backstroke for a while over low heat in vegetable stock until the stock reduces to merely coat the swimmers.

Best yet, you can grill halved hearty heads on the braai; if you’re too lazy to do that for yourself, head to Blondie, on Kloof Street in Cape Town, where they serve their wood-fire-grilled cos with olive oil, lemon juice and grated Parm. Make your friends order their own. Swoon.

Finally, lettuce is extremely well suited to the terrible-jokes collection I stockpile. I “leaf” you with one from children’s book author Shel Silverstein and another from any random seven year-old:

What did the carrot say to the wheat? Lettuce rest, I’m feeling beet.

What did the lettuce say to the celery? Stop stalking me!

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