A few weeks ago, I picked up “The Book of Greens: A Cook’s CompendiumHoping that I was getting out of what the author, Jenn Louis, diagnosed a “three green rut”. I had made predictable salads – kale,, Romanreluctantly wink cabbage – And the book, which catalogs more than forty varieties of greens, seemed to be the kind of thing that could inspire transformation. At the very least, I thought I would meet a new chic card.
I crossed it conscientiously, reporting recipes like grilled cabbage with miso and lime, a smoothie made with radish tops and mango And something involving tomato leaves in the dough – dishes that suggest a certain culinary agitation, or perhaps a cook at the house by the edge. But what stopped me cold was a photo: Panna Cotta.
It was a pale cream color, the texture of cappuccino mousse. He wore Ruby strawberries and a net of olive oil like jewelry. I watched it with reverence.
It was, of all things, a Panna Cotta lettuce.
The exact opposite of what I thought was looking for. (Also perhaps: the kind of dish you expect from a chef with a garden tattoo of herbs and a minor of philosophy.) I had picked up a book on adventurous greens, only to fall for the simplest.
However, Louis makes a convincing case.
“Dessert is probably the best way to wear your Greens,” Louis wrote about the dish. “The herbaceous of the butter lettuce lends itself perfectly to Panna Cotta. There is a sweet bitterness that the fat cotton in the cream here. Then come the strawberries and their brilliant sweetness. A finish of olive oil and that wows. Use the outer leaves for this recipe. They are often larger and are not as pretty on salads. The interior leaves are a little more soft and often do not have the flavor. »»
It was not just a recipe. It was doctrine: a work theory of lettuce, with a taxonomy of the interior and exterior leaves.
This kind of specificity? I live for that. I spent whole evenings on Google Ranch dressing grape varieties, decoding the semiotics of suburban chainreflecting on the subtle thrill of Foods that shake. So when Louis turned his accent on lettuce – lettuce! – And I took it seriously, I felt a real toll of recognition.
It was a little culinary rabbit hole, and I was already halfway.
Finally, this rabbit burrow left me two questions. Had I underestimated green vegetables in desserts? And more fundamentally: what does lettuce really look like?
In the weeks that followed, I saw a kind of double lettuce life. During the day, I did research on lettuce desserts as if it were a final project. At night, I taste lettuce like someone who meets him for the very first time. At the grocery store, I linger in the product section with the reverence of a botanist on sabbatical leave, a basket overflowing with Roman, iceberg, butter – everything that is leafing through and remotely flirted. I pinch, sniff, nibble and nods like a chlorophyll sommel.
I’m going to be honest: none of the green desserts that I found – the watercress granita, the Radicchio burned – has completely captured my imagination like the Panna Cotta. A spicy lettuce cake attracted my attention for a while, mainly because the author made a good point: if we have accepted zucchini bread and carrot cake In the cannon, why not lettuce? But in the end, I couldn’t really exceed the idea of a hot and grated iceberg head nestled in my cake bars. There are softer ways to chase this texture.
However, I left with a few notes:
The Roman opens with a crisp and light sweetness and a clean green bite, anchored by the robust strike of its ribbed leaves. The heart softens – catchy, almost refreshing – like the green cousin of a cucumber spriz. Iceberg barely records as a flavor, but its crunch offers deep satisfaction, in particular the white nucleus, which, when fresh, bursts with subtle humidity like plant pop rocks.
The butter lettuce is the sweet, silky and a little floral, with a silent hazelnut near the center which sneaks on you like a secret whisper in a sunny kitchen. And Louis was right: he is the one who belongs to the desserts. A slow weekend, deep in my lettuce spiral, I made the Panna Cotta. Butter lettuce brought something unexpected, a tea -shaped flavor gently, just a whisper of grass, with bitterness like almond skin. He curled up in the cream as if he had misunderstood the invitation, but everyone was too charmed to worry about it.
Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I developed a new dream for summer: a butter lettuce cheesecake. The lemon zest for brightness, a crust shortbread in butter to maintain everything together without controlling green. Perhaps pistachios crushed for additional green, perhaps a pouf loose with whipped cream. I want a dessert that Barely records like soft. Whoever persists as a perfume that you cannot place, but that you don’t want to stop breathing.
If it turns out, I could even share the recipe. Who knows. Maybe we will have a few other green believers for dessert at the end of the summer.
It’s funny. It all started because I bored salad. But somewhere along the way, I found myself defeated by a sheet. Lettuce, of all things. So familiar that he had almost disappeared in the background. But when I stopped to taste it – really snack it – I felt like something was open. It turns out that lettuce is not only lettuce. Sometimes it’s a way to come back to wonder.