LACTUCA SATIVAIT HASN’T BEEN very long since fine looseleaf lettuces began showing up in our markets and stores. Time was, a salad meant a wedge of head lettuce, such as iceberg, a slice of tomato, and maybe a little raw onion, all given a plop of Russian dressing. Three factors have wrought major changes in the lettuces we see in today’s salads.
The first is that the culinary customs of the Europeans have jumped the Atlantic and completely changed our thinking about salads. The second is that organic gardeners and farmers, ever searching for higher quality and better taste, have grown and popularized the many different European and Asian varieties of salad greens—especially lettuces—and brought them to farmers’ markets nationwide. And the third reason is the work of very talented and pioneering people like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California; Sibella Kraus of San Francisco, whose organizational skills brought organic produce to the public’s attention, and Renee Shepherd, who founded a seed company devoted to great-tasting varieties of lettuce.
More than anyone, it was Alice Waters who popularized the French love of mesclun. Mesclun, meaning a mixture of wild greens, was traditionally gathered in the spring when new shoots and leaves were emerging and country folks needed something fresh and green after a winter of pickles and stored foods.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
Although lettuce is cooked in many places around the world, it’s almost always eaten raw in the United States. This makes it doubly important to seek out organic lettuce that’s free from harmful agricultural chemical residues. And, boy, are they ever used on lettuce.
Massive use of agricultural chemicals would be unnecessary were lettuce grown organically. I’ve grown lettuce on both coasts and found it an easy crop to grow. All lettuce required was a rich, crumbly soil with a lot of decayed organic matter in it, cool weather, plenty of water, sunshine, and a good weeding from time to time. I’ve never had to use any pesticides, but I did need to set out slug and snail traps made from jar lids filled with beer and set into the soil at 10-foot intervals. The slugs crawl in, but they don’t crawl out.
NUTRITION
Romaine is the nutritional champ among lettuces. Just 1⁄2 cup raw and shredded is high in potassium and provides about 10 percent of our daily needs of vitamins A and C and folic acid.
TYPES
There are five basic types of lettuce that have been cultivated since the 16th century (earlier varieties of cultivated lettuce date back to ancient Egypt). The types are classified according to their leaf shape and texture.
Butterhead or Boston lettuce has loose rosettes of leaves, with a creamy yellow-green center and a soft, buttery texture.
Batavian lettuce is a sturdy type that forms shaggy heads with cream-colored centers of fine, sweet flavor and crispy texture.
Romaine lettuce is familiar to everyone as the crunchy tall heads used to make Caesar Salad (see recipe at right).
Looseleaf lettuces don’t make heads but make a loose collection of leaves from a central growing point. They come in dozens of varieties—green, reddish, and speckled; smooth-edged, wavy-edged, pointy-edged, lobed, ruffled, slender, wide, and everything in between.
Crisphead lettuces are the cabbage-like ball heads often called Iceberg, although Iceberg is just one of many cultivars of this type of lettuce. Crispheads don’t have much flavor or nut-rition, but they do provide a very refreshing crunchiness.
SEASONALITY
Lettuce is a cool-weather crop, but that doesn’t prevent growers in various parts of the country from growing lettuce year-round by using such things as shading devices on hot summer days. In cold winter, lettuce is grown in Florida and California’s warm Imperial Valley. The growers find ways to meet the constant demand. ....read more
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