Steemit Iron Chef 2018 Act 01 Round 04 : Wilted Wild Lettuce

haphazard-hstead (66)in #steemit-ironchef • 7 years ago (edited)

I harvest lettuce from the wild. And cook it in an old-time way known by gardeners and foragers alike. It's delicious! Come into my post and appreciate why this recipe has been handed down through the ages.

An Old-Time Recipe

I grew up eating wilted lettuce and wilted wild greens of all kinds. It's one of the standard old-time recipes handed down through the ages - centuries and centuries. Gardeners know this is a great way to eat lettuce that is starting to bolt and get bitter. And it's a classic meal of foragers. The trouble is, wilted lettuce is a usually served in a pretty simple form.

Here's how I usually make Wilted Wild Lettuce - heaped over a baked potato. That's homestead cooking -- simple, with a focus on getting busy with eating! How can I elevate this old peasant dish?

Gathering The Greens

Earlier this week, I made a big, delicious salad out of wild greens -- and not a single one was lettuce. That's because I was saving the wild lettuce for the Steemit Iron Chef contest. Yes, there is so much wild lettuce out there, growing on its own. It has the best flavor early in the spring, so I'm glad Lettuce was this week's featured ingredient.

Wild lettuce is in the same genus as the domestic lettuce that we grow in gardens or buy in the store. The kind I find most often, Prickly Wild Lettuce (Lactuca serriola) is the species most closely related to cultivated lettuce.¹ At this time of year, though, the distinctive prickles on the backside of the leaf's center vein haven't formed yet, or are too small to see, even though I can feel them.

This early in the spring, wild lettuce looks so different from the images used in most foraging guidebooks or online. There are so many plants that look something, sort of, almost, maybe, like real wild lettuce when it is this young! And there are several different species of wild lettuce. This can be unsettling for beginning foragers.

Young Wild Lettuce may be for more advanced foragers. But it becomes easier to identify as it gets larger. The two bright green clumps in the center are young Prickly Wild Lettuce. It's OK to let plants get older so identification is easy. That's a good way to learn what the younger plants look like!

Most of the wild lettuce in North America was introduced from Europe. But this Miner's Lettuce is native to western North America. It's not related to domestic lettuce at all, but I'm including it because it's called Lettuce here! It's such a great-tasting fresh salad green that it's sold in markets. @pusteblume showed some in a recent post for the great FruitandVeggies challenge run by @lenasveganliving. These plants will look a lot different as they get older.

In the Kitchen

This young Wild Lettuce and Miner's Lettuce are much more fragile than older plants. So I treat them gently as I make sure that I've only got the kinds of plants I want! And I wash them well, because this time of year, there can be a lot of grit and mud from rain!

Left: Miner's Lettuce. Right: Wild Lettuce.

Left: Very young Prickly Wild Lettuce. Right: Very young dandelion leaves for comparison.

I'm using the Jerusalem artichoke tubers as a base for my wilted wild lettuce, to provide some crunch and a nice smoky flavor. Those little cherry tomatoes are the very last ones from my garden last summer. They were green when I picked them in October. I've let them ripen slowly, a few at a time.

Making traditional wilted wild lettuce is so easy. I learned to do it as a child. Cook slices of bacon in a cast iron skillet, slowly, over a low heat. With sliced onions that slowly caramelize as the bacon cooks. In the skillet, cover the bacon and onions with a mix of apple cider vinegar and brown sugar, and black pepper. When that comes to a boil, add the greens and let them wilt. Serve it up!

Serving It Up!

For the Steemit Iron Chef contest, I laid 2 of the wild heads of lettuce in the onion-bacon-vinegar-brown sugar mix to wilt them. On the plate, I laid the wilted lettuce over discs of raw Jerusalem artichokes, with a few caramelized onions and bits of bacon. I simply put the baby Prickly Wild Lettuce and Miner's Lettuce on the side, on more Jerusalem artichoke discs. Those young greens don't need any cooking to be tender and delicious! They are not flavorless like a lot of store-bought lettuce.

The wilted lettuce is tender and mild. The smoky flavor of the Jerusalem artichokes goes so well with the sauce and provides a crisp, crunchy contrast to the lettuce. The baby lettuce leaves are so mild, they don't need anything! But they taste great dipped in the warm sauce!

I'll just add that serving this salad with a thick, creamy Stout beer was the right thing to do! :D

What Do You Think?

Have you ever cooked lettuce?
Have you ever made wilted lettuce from older garden lettuce?
Have you ever foraged Wild Lettuce or Miner's Lettuce?
Do you forage for any wild food?
Would you eat my wild lettuce?

I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.

Thanks @progressivechef for creating the Steemit Iron Chef contest series!

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