At The Chef’s Garden, the farm team grows lettuces that are so flavorful they can be appreciated as much as entrées. Here, we’ll share delicious, eye-catching ways to plate lettuce and for patrons to enjoy it in a glass.
At the Bar: Lettuce Mojito
Muddle a few petite heads of lettuce with sugar in the bottom of a shaker. Add half a lemon, a shaker full of ice, a nice pour of vodka, and a splash of yellow chartreuse. Shake hard (real hard!) until the shaker forms ice crystals around your hands. Send it through a Hawthorne strainer and serve with a little lemon peel and another nice petite head of lettuce.
Fine Dining: Blanched and Dressed Lettuce
By going this route, you’ve nearly created a new vegetable, one worthy of exploration. Deliciously simple!
Banquet Dining: Salad
Black Olive. Browned milk powder. Rye bread. Salt.
We dehydrate the olive. The milk powder is browned in butter on high heat. The bread is torn and toasted. All ingredients are then processed lightly in a food processor and seasoned if needed. We made a few thousand of these for an event in Las Vegas. It was a fun passed appetizer representative of the farm in a world far from it. We believe these are great for banquets. It’s a brief experience for guests to connect with agriculture in a contemporary way.
More About Lettuce
There’s so much choice when it comes to the lovely lettuce plant:
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Bibb lettuce
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Crispleaf lettuce
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Crystal lettuce
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Lettuce rosettes
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Lolla Rossa lettuce
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Miner’s lettuce
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Mixed lettuce
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Oak lettuce
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Romaine lettuce
When you click on these lettuce links to explore possibilities, you’ll discover that many of them contain multiple marvelous choices within the variety.
We hope you enjoyed this installment of Food Plating Techniques!