Lettuce | Canalside Community Food

With a significant amount of lettuce in the share as growth ramps up with the arrival of warm weather, it’s timely to share some inspiration for this summer share staple. The growers ‘cut and come again’ with our salad leaves as it allows us to keep cropping* the same plants until they bolt** ready to set seed*** later in the summer. We’re currently harvesting the first batch of outdoor lettuce. Later successions of sowings will mean we can keep harvesting lettuce right through until the end of the summer and into early autumn. This means that we can offer a mixed salad each week (currently including ‘Red’, ‘Paris de Blonde’, ‘Lollo Biondi’ and ‘Maravilla de Verano’) and we get the maximum produce from each plant for the least work.

*harvesting from
**send up a flower head
***make seeds for the next generation of plants

I remember really struggling to use all my salad in my first summer or two of Canalside produce, so until you’re ready to eat it by the handful straight from the bag (if that day ever comes for you!), hopefully some of these ideas will help you make the most of our summer leaves.

If you have a copy of the Boxing Clever Cookbook – the one cookbook I do go on about because it’s so useful for ideas and inspiration for using highly abundant seasonal veg – you’ll be able to find no less than 9 lettuce recipes! Eight of them can use loose leaves in the way we offer them, including 5 types of soup, lettuce and coconut chutney and lettuce risotto.

It also has a recipe for lettuce and walnut loaf – a sweet cake-like one with cinnamon and sugar. If you’re intrigued enough to try it, this seems to be the same recipe and here’s one using ginger and mace instead of cinnamon – a vintage 1968 recipe from the Kansas Wheat Commission.

Otherwise the following recipes can all be used with loose leaves, either whole or chopped:

Lettuce risotto with goat’s cheese from Delicious magazine – double tick as it would also use spring onions from this week’s share

Quick braised lettuce and peas from BBC Good Food

Garden salad, with a dressing recipe that also incorporates spring onion from this week’s share

If you eat animal protein, this dish might interest you:
Cod with bacon, lettuce and peas from BBC Good Food

There’s also an array of salad dressing recipes online of course – if you’d like to browse recipes for dressings that Rebecca has tried and shared, you’ll find them on the blog on our website here.

For recipes from Rebecca that would specifically use basil from the plants you collected recently, look here.

There’s a lot of salad in the share at the moment, so I thought I would share a tip I have recently adopted for bulking out salads with minimal effort – homemade breadcrumbs. Once baked they should store in an airtight container for 1 to 6 months, depending what source you believe. It’s a simple one, but very effective!

Ingredients:
Bread, ideally leftover to minimise waste (i’ve been using bread buns post BBQ)
Optional flavouring ideas (per cup of bread crumbs):
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon dried mixed herbs

Method:

1. Break bread up into a food processor and blend until desired crumb size is achieved.
2. Spread evenly on a baking sheet and bake at 150°C for 15 minutes, turning during cooking if necessary.
3. Cool on baking sheet out of oven.
4. Fill jar, minimising airspace and store in a cool dry place until needed (I use them most lunchtimes at the moment!)

This week’s recipe is a little niche if you stick to the vegan recipe, especially now that IKEA has closed in Coventry, but it can be adapted with other seafood flavours (the most obvious being actual seafood e.g. prawns). At worst, at least I’m giving you a quick and easy vegan mayo recipe… It’s another that I picked up in Sweden and is an adaptation of the dish “Skagen” which is a sort of seafood toast topper/sandwich filler (£6 for a baguette in the Volvo canteen ouch!). For a while it was my absolute favourite breakfast when combined with cucumber, salad and tomatoes all of which will be abundant in the shares over summer.

Vegan Skagen

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 jar Seaweed pearls (AKA veggie caviar, available at IKEA)
• Bunch of dill
• 1 pack of tofu, drained and squeezed as much as possible whilst maintaining solid chunks

Mayo:

• 100ml Soya milk (must be soya – I’ve tried with others but they refused to emulsify with the oil)
• 1 tbsn lemon juice
• 1 tsp mustard
• 200 ml oil (preferably rapeseed, other veggie oils work but again can have trouble emulsifying)

To serve:

• Toast
• Lettuce
• Tomato
• Cucumber
• Wedge of lemon (optional)

Method:
For the mayo, combine milk, lemon juice and mustard in a blender (handheld will do) before SLOWLY adding oil as a thin stream whilst blending on a fairly high speed. As you get to the end of the oil the mixture should thicken up to a mayonnaise texture.

Then combine all ingredients in some Tupperware and serve with toast, sliced cucumber/tomato and lettuce. A lemon wedge is a nice addition if you have it.

This week’s share contained generous quantities of lettuce and peas again and if you can bear to use the delicious peas in a cooked dish (I never can) you might like to try this recipe for pea and lettuce soup – ideal for anyone who struggles to get through lots of lettuce! I’ve forgotten where this came from, so I can’t credit it to anyone, but there are loads of similar recipes online if you wanted a different variation.

Lettuce, pea and mint soup:
300g green lettuce, shredded
1 medium onion, finely sliced (at this time of year I’d use spring onions instead!)
300g peas
50g butter
750ml hot veg stock
small handful fresh mint
50ml single cream – some recipes suggest using creme fraiche instead, added as a dollop on top to serve

Fry the onion until soft.
Add the peas and stock. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the lettuce and mint. Cook for a further 2 minutes.
Add the cream. Blend until smooth.
Season well with salt and pepper.