First Salad, with Rainbow Trout
May 2nd, 2009 · No Comments · Posted in garden, Recipes
At last, we are making our own salad from the garden again.
I take a lazy approach to growing salad greens. As soon as the soil can be worked in the spring I add a little compost and scatter seeds for a variety of greens and lettuces. One narrow bed was devoted to arugula, mizuna, spinach, tat soi and red mustard. In another bed, I sectioned off small areas for a generous variety of leaf lettuces. Somehow I manage to collect a trove of them amongst my seed packets, especially the ones with tantalizing names: Australian Yellow Leaf, Black Seeded Simpson, Drunken Woman, Ruby, Forellenschluss, Red Dear Tongue, Oak Leaf.
I deeply admire people who start heading lettuces in seed cells and plant them out so neatly in the garden. Lacking a greenhouse or grow lights, I just scatter seeds and let nature take its course. No one but me has to look at the tangles of lettuces that result. But these are what we call “cut and come again” lettuces, meaning you just attack with a pair of scissors and harvest what you need. The plants grow back into solid masses of greens.
We will be eating from these beds into the summer. When the greens go to seed, they simply find their way into the compost heap. (Perhaps the gardener will make a more concerted effort this year to save some of his own seed.)
As you can see from the photo, this variety of baby brassicas and colorful leaf lettuces makes a striking salad. The young brassicas–arugula, mizuna, mustard–definitely add some zest as well as visual interest. But this is only the beginning of possibilities, there are so many different greens to choose from. Simply give them a good wash, drain well and dress with your favorite vinaigrette.
Last night we came home from the Whole Foods with some farm-raised trout fillets. With our home-grown salad and a glass of chardonnay, the trout made an easy spring dinner.
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