(corn salad with Hudson Valley feta and citrus vinaigrette)
When I was thinking about my Spring menu for the restaurant this year it occurred to me that salad is a little like fashion.
If you think back a few years you might agree we have had our love affair with radicchio in the early nineties then frisée salad came along until we were fed-up with the stereotypical French-style poached egg & lardons salad. In the late nineties we chefs would put the healthy, saturated green looking cress or peppery arugula next to any carefully crafted tart or meticulously fluted-edge quiche and after that the mesclun mix salad has had a long run. Mesclun never did it for me -- it’s a little like laundry, pre cut, pre-rinsed and packed in oxygen modified plastic. Definitely a smart way to bring “fresh” greens to consumers in a lazy ready-to-eat form but let’s face it the average mesclun has most likely had a several thousand mile journey from far away before being put on shelves in a local supermarket – local foods anybody?
(corn cursted soft-shell crab with mache and Spring vegetables)
Let’s Talk French
I have been noticing a relative new lettuce on the block for some time now taking more and more presence here in the US market.
Mâche (French) is made more approachable for us and is sometimes called corn salad (American-English), which is kind of funny - since this lettuce has nothing to do with corn actually. Supposedly some 800 stores currently sell it across the country! Called rapunzel in Austrian-German, this poly-named lettuce is sweet and nutty in flavor and is somewhat comparable to the softness of Boston lettuce. Some stores label it as lamb’s lettuce since it has about 2-inch long tongue-shaped petals.
(brunch fritatta with ratatouille and lamb tongue salad)
Green & Nutritious
Whatever you want to call it, mâche has good nutritional content, vitamin C, B6, B9 and omega-3fatty acids
With it’s tender texture it is a lovely companion shredded in new potato soup, steamed and pureed next to fish or it may just sit next to your brunch omelet drizzled with some citrus vinaigrette.
Still the question remains - will mâche be the hottest lettuce fashion trend of the season?
