Tonights Salad: Little Gem Lettuce, Pickled Mustard Seeds and Roasted Red Peppers

Because you’ve pickled your mustard seeds like I’ve been nagging you to do, and because you’ve pickled your lemons like I showed you how to do way back when, tonight: when you looked at what was going to go into your salad, you were halfway there.

This salad is a mixture of “inspired by Ceasar” that is, very very savoury, oomphed up with mustard and worchestershire sauce, garlic, and olive oil….unlike a Ceasar, though, here I’ve swapped the Parmesan to preserved lemon: it gives an equally rich and salty umami quality to the salad, you’ll be puckering and drooling to be honest though you can always cut back on the amount of lemon, and I’ve not added croutons: you can if you want. But while the salad is inspired by Ceasar, it is also inspired by a salad I ate in Spain in which the little gem lettuce and roasted red peppers were bathed in a hot sauteed garlic ddressing. I’ve cooled it off, used raw garlic for an invigorating smack, and……

Oh yeah. The pickled mustard seeds are so good: plain dried mustard seeds will not work, though you can simmer some seeds in a mixture of vinegar and generously salted water. An instant pickle, almost. Or you can use whole grain mustard instead of the mustard seeds + prepared mustard. And I use roasted red pepper from a jar, the kind that comes from Greece, California or Spain. If you have homemade roasted red peppers, these are good too, no doubt even better. But beause they are a small part of the recipe I wouldn’t make them specially for it.

Little Gem Lettuce, Pickled Mustard Seeds, Roasted Red Peppers
Serves 4, divide in half for two, quarter it for a dinner on your own
4 heads little gem lettuce, sliced crosswise, in about 1/2 inch slices
2-3 roasted red peppers, cut into strips
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
3-4 tablespoons pickled mustard seeds plus a little of the marinade you have them in
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 tablespoon or more a mild French mustard such as maille or other (I used a Polish mustard which had a slight edge of sweetness)
About 1-2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce, to taste
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2-1 depending on the size, preserved lemon, diced or coarsely chopped, plus a little bit–a teaspoon or two–of its brine
Additional young leaves of greens, a small handful, mesclum type; i plucked mine from the garden. you could use a few leaves of Romaine instead

Place the sliced lettuce and roasted red peppers in a bowl and toss together.
In a separate bowl mix together the garlic, mustard seeds and brine, wine vinegar, mustard, Worchestershire sauce, and olive oil; mix together really well.
When you are ready to eat, toss the lettuce and peppers with the dressing, then add the preserved lemons and mix well, then at the last minute add a bit of the fresh lettuce. you want a combination of lettuce that has been well tossed, almost become one with the dressing, and a few leaves of freshness added at the last minute.

Eat now. Eat with a roast chicken, with venison sausages, with a potato gratin, with roast fish and artichokes. Eat with spaghetti aglio olio, or a chunk of crusty bread. Or just eat, from a bowl, and enjoy.