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Whether green or red leaf, salad is the fresh and light strength of a french meal. There are hundreds of varieties that can seed in your head and season your creativity and imagination! In the meantime, test your knowledge here!
Salad lettuce History
The lettuce would be a small salad ancestor serrated leaves and bitter taste. According to the Scriptures, “was among the lettuce plants which Moses commanded the Israelites to surround the Passover lamb to commemorate the bitterness of exile.”
Over the centuries and cultural improvements, lettuce exchanged its ruffled and bitterness coat for a “rich green satin reminiscent of the full skirt of a ballerina about to dance the minuet,” and the sweet milky flavor that we know. The Pythagoreans called it “the plant of the eunuchs” in reference to the sedative effect that was supposed to exert on the reproductive property that it was consistently recognized for centuries and that made her a symbol of chastity. The Romans, great lovers of lettuce consummed it to “prepare the stomach for the culinary prowess.”
Learn more about salad
In the medley of lettuces are the popular butter lettuce to the classic apple round and smooth, with elongated leaves romaine and iceberg lettuce (iceberg, whose representative is a pearl).
Less known but also in the Round “fat” lettuce (the pretty name of “Sucrine”, “Craquerelle lunch “…) and” cut “as the” Oak Leaf “whose long leaves seem to be harvested by hand.
The sarabande of chicory is not less varied: the “Barbe Capuchin”, long white and disheveled sheet, is the closest salad of chicory flowers native to our blue slope. In the category of chicory called “wild” fall the oblong and crisp “Loaf sugar” and red chicory of “Venezia” from “Treviso”. Among the improved chicory, escarole (which further leaves join in a cone shape) is near the leaf. This, thanks to the technique of etiolation, offers a large courtyard surrounded by gold and dark green curled leaves.
The salad in question
How to choose the salad
Lettuce or chicory salad must, of course, be very fresh! The base of the salad, as white as possible, is a reliable guarantee.
How to store lettuce
It is best to renew your frequent purchases of salads. For refrigerated (two or three days), it is better to keep them, washed and spun in a bowl covered with plastic wrap.
Preparing the salad
Is the preparation of the salad complicated? Simply cut the base, then peel off the front. Then wash, with possibly a dash of vinegar in the rinse water. Nothing better than the salad spinner to drain without crushing it. One should season salad at the last moment, dressing having the annoying habit of cooking the tender leaves, leaving them soft and sticky. But some rather thick salad leaves (some chicory, for example) like this treatment, gently soak the tangy sauce.
Nutrition
Salad being mainly eaten raw, lettuce is a refreshing and digestible appetizers. It is advantageous to provide meals regularly for its nutritional qualities, including its high minerals and vitamins density. It is particularly popular in slimming regimes, for its low energy (13 kcal per 100 g) and the feeling of satiety it provides.
It can of course also be consumed in a cooked vegetable dish. In all cases, to gain maximum benefit from its “discretion” in calories, it is desirable to limit the fat seasoning.
It was once attributed to lettuce a sedative and hypnotic influence. In fact, these properties belong to a specific variety of lettuce, Lactuca virosa, very bitter and therefore unfit for food. The juice of the lettuce, registered in the Codex under the name lactucarium, is rich in lactones (bitter triterpenes). It also contains mannitol, traces of organic acids (malic acid, oxalic acid), amino acid (asparagine), waxes and resins. It can be extracted and used in therapeutics internally or externally, either in syrup or decoction, or poultice or lotion.
