Tonight I had a salad, made of: lettuce, sweet potato leaves, yellow wood sorrel, fennel leaves, and tomatoes. That's because making a salad means taking a bowl out to the garden and seeing what's edible and big enough to cut. This is how I've discovered that things like lambsquarters are food, not just weeds.
I've often pondered how different my salads look compared to the ones in the restaurants. I spent my whole life eating salads made of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. But in my garden, that is impossible - cucumbers and lettuce are never ripe at the same time. So I'm left to wonder - is there a climate (and a cuisine) where cucumbers and lettuce coexist and ripen together, or is this an dish invented only after international produce transport became common?*
*Ratatouille is almost, but not quite like this. Eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers are all warm-weather crops, so I can see how, in theory, you could make ratatouille from the garden. It's just my poor sense of timing that means I end up buying one of the three.
2 comments:
much of the dishes we think of as iconic to our cultural identity are so very recent in their creation, and owing it entirely to the food revolution which allows us any kind of food any time of the year.
On the meat side of things the classic hamburger on a bun with lettuce and tomato is the same quandry. None of those things are actually in season at the same time.
I am super jealous of your salads for one. And you knowledge of edible greens!
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetable1/g/SuccessionPlant.htm
This is a useful article to help you get longer harvest periods by successively sowing - that way you should achieve some overlap of the crops you want to have ready at the same time.
I've never tried it but it is a well documented procedure.
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