SALAD GREENS: LETTUCE, ARUGULA, FRISÉE

Storing: Keep lettuce in a reasonably cool, humid environment—a plastic bag with holes in it in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. To keep lettuce fresh longest, don’t cut off the stem or wash it until you’re ready to use it. Keep it away from the colder spots in the fridge—if lettuce freezes, it will never recover. Excess moisture causes rot, so place a paper towel in the plastic bag. Check your lettuce every day or so and remove any leaves that have started to brown and replace the paper towel if it’s wet. Most lettuces will last for a week or more if stored this way.

Restoring: Most of us plan to take care of our lettuce lovingly, but there are times when we shove it in the fridge and forget about it. And then it looks so pathetic that we just want to throw it away. But lettuce can be revived: Cut off the stem, remove brown leaves, and tear the rest into bite-sized pieces. Fill a big bowl with very cold water and add the lettuce; let it soak in the fridge for ~ ½ hour, then drain, dry, and return to the fridge. No one will know.
 
Avoiding waste: You don’t have to throw away leftover salad, even if it is dressed—if you cover and refrigerate it, it will last 1-2 days. Although the salad quickly loses its crispness, some people like it that way—it becomes salade fatiguée, or wilted salad, popular in France and Italy.
 
If a wilted salad is not appealing, you can turn it into a gazpacho-like soup or slaw-like spread. Just transfer it to a food processor and pulse for a few seconds, then adjust seasonings.
 
Preserving: Most methods of preserving vegetables don’t work for lettuce. The only one we have found successful is to make lettuce soup and freeze it—a wonderful way to use up all the lettuce in your fridge and save a little spring for winter. If you have found other methods that work, please send them in. [link underlined to Chilled Lettuce Soup recipe]

Over the course of the CSA season, we receive about a dozen varieties of salad greens. Early weeks delight with leaf and butterhead lettuces. They’re similar, but the butterheads are usually smaller and have tighter heads. We also get romaine, which has elongated leaves that are perfect to stuff and eat as finger foods.

Many of the most beautiful and tasty varieties are also the most fragile; they fall apart when they’re washed and do not last very long after they’re picked. That’s why our farmers also include tropicana lettuce in our mix—it’s a workhorse that keeps its shape without losing leaves and will keep for over two weeks.

Arugula is another spring green that is usually eaten raw. It has a much spicier taste than lettuce, making it a wonderful complement that does well in a mixed green salad.

We receive frisée, also known as curly endive, in the spring and sometimes in the fall. A  type of chicory, it has a stronger, more bitter taste than lettuce and a curly leaf; it adds great texture and deeper taste to a salad, and is often cooked (you can see some suggestions on our cooking greens page).

Washing lettuce: Wash lettuce thoroughly right before using it. Although the farm crew gives our lettuces a good rinse, they grow close to the ground and tend to hold a lot of soil inside. Cut off the stem and put any brown leaves into the compost. Separate remaining leaves and soak in a bowl of water, swirling to loosen any dirt. Remove lettuce from the water, leaving the dirt in the bowl. Repeat as needed.

If you don’t have a salad spinner, you might consider buying one. Or you can loosely wrap the cleaned leaves with a dry cloth and let it sit in the fridge while you prepare the dressing; it will be crisp and dry when you want it.

To cut or to tear? The consensus is that tearing lettuce is better than cutting—tearing by hand doesn’t damage the cellular structure the way that a sharp knife can, so the leaves retain moisture and stay crisp longer. It’s also a great way to introduce children to food preparation.

On the other hand, cutting is much faster and results in more uniform pieces, so if you’re going to use the lettuce right away and time is tight, cutting is a fine option. A group of chefs who assumed that cutting was verboten tested this and it turns out that it doesn’t make a big difference.

If you’re making chiffonade—a batch of fine, long strips to scatter over dishes like chili or soup—stack lettuce leaves about 10-12 high and if the leaves allow it, roll them up like a cigar. Using a sharp knife, cut the lettuce into thin strips.

Tossing Lettuce: It’s worth your while to take an extra minute to toss the salad and dressing so that all the leaves are coated. Some cooks prefer not to overdo it so that the lettuce remains crisp. At the other end of the scale, some French chefs prefer to toss vigorously and for a long time until the leaves break and become soft; this would be called salade fatiguée, or tired salad.

• Supply a reasonable amount of protein. We have not consulted nutritionists, but the Food and Drug Administration recommends a daily intake of 50 grams protein* spread over three to five meals. For a main dish salad, we like to aim for 10-15 g protein. Three cups of torn lettuce supply about 1 g protein, so we generally try to add ~ 9-14 g more unless we add other protein-rich foods to the meal. The amounts of protein listed below are rough averages based on the USDA database.
•  Taste good. The lettuces we get in our CSA shares are tastier than average—but we probably want more flavor and texture to make us feel satisfied.
•  Fill us up. A bowl of lettuce won’t keep us going until the next meal; we need to add something more filling.