This is the lettuce for any salad
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: the vegetable you should use to make salads.
Did you know that lettuce is the third most consumed vegetable in the Netherlands, after tomatoes and carrots? That information and much more interesting facts can be found on the platform What does the Netherlands eat. And even though a good hearty salad doesn't necessarily have to contain lettuce leaves (think of a delicious coleslaw with cashew crunch), lettuce is often the base. How can it be that the leafy variety described below is still not mega popular?
Because as mentioned: you can also make a great salad from cabbage varieties like red cabbage or cavolo nero or something completely different, like papaya in a Thai salad. At the same time, iceberg lettuce seems to be losing popularity for years. People are increasingly willing to try new varieties, such as lollo rosso or lamb's lettuce. And with this, we advocate for the lettuce variety that most people only know from the classic Caesar's salad: Romaine lettuce.
Nice and sturdy
In the Netherlands, it is also called Romana, and this lettuce variety has beautiful large and sturdy leaves. The leaves have a slight bitterness, well balanced with fresh sour vinaigrette or the saltiness of the anchovies in a Caesar's. It contains considerable amounts of vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium, and iron.
That quiet but cool cousin
So why don't we eat more of it? It can also withstand heat quite well, so if you jazz up your salad with, for example, freshly baked bacon bits or roasted cherry tomatoes from the oven, the chance is smaller than with butter lettuce that the leaves wilt immediately as you stand there. You can also fill the leaves well with, for example, Mexican spiced chicken and black beans and sour cream and then roll it up like a kind of healthy burrito.
It contains more nutrients than iceberg lettuce, has a nice savory flavor, and is therefore sturdier than head lettuce. Due to its smooth texture, you can fill and roll it up well (unlike the lollos). In short, I only see advantages. Everyone for the Romaine! You can find it at many supermarkets, but the most beautiful, most flavorful specimens are usually at the Turkish or Moroccan greengrocer.
