Living Lettuce ~ Have your Lettuce and Eat it Too!
Have you ever bought a living lettuce from the supermarket – and then after a few salad days it looks like this?
Well if you stick it outside in the sun (if such a thing should occur) and water it occasionally (if it doesn’t rains as much as usual) and have a friendly chat with it now and then it will, after a week or two, look like this …
Which is quite a saving, n’est pas?
My friend Carol who knows a bit about plants and stuff says it would better still if planted in the garden and as soon as/if ever our garden is sorted out I will do just that.
Carol also gave me a couple of courgettes from her garden, just babies with the flowers still attached …
… so I had this delicious impromptu lunch …
Tagliatelle with Courgettes, Lemon & Chilli for one
1 lovely fresh courgette from a friend
½ tbsp olive oil
½ tsp crushed garlic
finely grated zest of half a lemon
juice of half a lemon
a few chilli flakes to taste
90ml or so double cream
1 tbsp freshly grated parmesan cheese
a handful of cooked tagliatelle
~ Cut the courgette into julienne aka matchsticks.
~ Sauté in the olive oil together with the garlic and when touched with colour but still a bit crisp stir in the zest, chilli flakes and juice and scrape the result onto a clean plate whilst making the sauce (this means the courgette won’t overcook in the meantime).
~ Add the cream to the recently vacated pan, bring to a simmer and stir in the parmesan, continue simmering for a few seconds longer till thick and then stir in the cooked pasta.
~ Once the pasta is hot add the cooked courgettes and their juices, season to taste and eat.
To garnish my lunch I whipped up a quick batter (just a tbsp of seasoned self raising flour and enough fizzy water to make a coating consistency), dipped the courgette flour into it and fried till crisp. It was OK but really just a vehicle for crunchy batter, the flower itself was of no interest to me other than academic.
Suzy Bowler
Having been a somewhat itinerant chef for over 30 years I was amazed, on my return to the UK, at the blatant food waste that now seems to be rife in the country; amazed and irritated. So much so that I decided to start a blog about spontaneous cooking from leftovers to show people that there are great alternatives to throwing food away.
2 Comments
Choclette
Oh no, having no internet access sounds pretty dire. I have finally started to write a review of your most wonderful book, so will do my bit to market it as soon as it's posted.
I buy those salad things when they are in the reduced section and plant them out – works really well unless it's wet and the slugs get them (as they did with the last lot).
Sue
Living Lettuces from the supermarkets are wonderful, see here for what I did to mine.
http://ournewlifeinthecountry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/starting-to-run-out.html
We ate lots for ages but then one night a deer came brazenly up to the house and ate the lot !!
So I'm going to use my now empty troughs for the strawberry runners instead.
BT should be shot down in flames, they are absolutely useless, I really feel for you. We are currently sourcing satellite broadband and hopefully will be able to use just our mobiles for telephone service at the new place. At LAST we will be living somewhere with a decent reception, it seems we live on the 'right side of the hill'…. the first time believe it or not since I've had a mobile phone!!