Simply use a veggie peeler or knife to shave off the fibrous outer skin. Each 500 grams of fresh lettuce leaves, containing 10 grams of protein, fat 2.5 grams, carbohydrates 16.5 grams, 190 mg of calcium, 185 mg of phosphorus, iron 5.5 mg, carotene 10.7 mg, vitamin B20.6 mg, vitamin C75 mg and so on. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. Where do you get it and how do you prepare it? Kho adds that as a little boy in Singapore, when he caught a cold he would enjoy plain rice porridge with some "crunchy salty and sweet celtuce pickle full of soy umami" served alongside. This means if you click on the link, visit Amazon and purchase the item, I will earn some money at no extra cost to you. The stems, however, are the real treasures. According to some home cooks, it's better than broccoli in every way. Peel the stalk (2) and then cut the celtuce as desired, into coins (3), matchsticks, or thin planks, the latter of which Jane Grigson prefers when eating celtuce raw: "with salt like [you would eat] celery, or with vinaigrette or mayonnaise." Popular in China, this leafy green vegetable is great for stir-fries, salads, pickles—and just about everything else, too. But in the stem content is much lower, every 500 grams of lettuce stems, containing only 1.5 grams of protein, fat is only 0.2 grams, carbohydrates only 4.7 grams, carotene and vitamin C content is minimal. Simply sowing in a depth of 0.6 to 1.2 cm (1/4inch to 1/2inch). Ad Choices, Getting to Know Chinese Lettuce, aka Stem Lettuce, aka Celtuce. In Land of Fish and Rice, Fuchsia Dunlop included a couple celtuce recipes "because of my fervent hope that this exquisite vegetable, a kind of lettuce with thick, truncheon-like stems, will become more widely available outside China." In Land of Fish and Rice, her most recent cookbook, Fuchsia Dunlop writes, "The leafy tips are fabulous stir-fried with nothing more than oil and salt. After that, do whatever you want with it: eat it raw in salads, pickle it, roast it, stir-fry it. Cut into silk, add 5 grams of salt and mix for about half an hour4. Space celtuce seeds 6 inches apart and thin them out to 12 inches apart when bigger. Celtuce’s main attraction is its stem, and one of the best ways to prepare it is to strip the stem down into noodle-like shapes with a peeler or spiralizer. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Rhoda Boone. Celtuce, otherwise known in English as stem lettuce, asparagus lettuce, celery lettuce, or Chinese lettuce, and in Chinese called wosun, is a green vegetable that, you've probably surmised, comes from China. In his heyday, before World War I, W. Atlee traveled 30,000 miles annually to find seeds to bring back stateside (at least according to an extremely long company history), and David maintained connections with some expats in, among other places, China—including Pearl S. Buck and a missionary named Carter Holton, who coughed up the Chinese-lettuce seeds. In the Huffington Post, Joe Satran attributes its enduring obscurity to a "vicious cycle." Your email address will not be published. "It’s not popular enough for many farmers to grow, so it’s not widely distributed, which keeps people from being able to try it, which keeps it unpopular," he writes. Space 20 to 30cm (8 to 12in) in the row, and treat like regular lettuce. Chinese lettuce, aka celtuce, aka stem lettuce, aka asparagus lettuce, is a versatile vegetable that's great in stir-fries and soups. If you're unfamiliar, then, perhaps it's time to make celtuce's acquaintance. Shorn of their fibrous outer layers, they are delicate, translucent and the prettiest pale green." It’s not easily available in shops and ideal for certain types of recipes, Your email address will not be published. Cooks everywhere praise its flavor and its broad versatility. Plant every 3 weeks for a continuous supply. The perfect temperature for germination is 4 to 16°C (40 to 60°F). Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. When preparing celtuce, you might also find that the very bottom portions of the stem are too tough/fibrous to use. Kian Lam Kho, proprietor of the Chinese home-cooking blog Red Cook, writes, "It is a refreshingly crunchy and succulent vegetable that contrasts well with other ingredients in stir-fries and cold dishes because it keeps its crunchy texture even after cooking and marinating." The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Good story, actually: Celtuce seeds arrived in the U.S. via none other than David Burpee, he of Burpee seed company fame—David was the son of W. Atlee Burpee, who founded the business. Since 1995, Epicurious has been the ultimate food resource for the home cook, with daily kitchen tips, fun cooking videos, and, oh yeah, over 33,000 recipes. 1. First thing: you’ve got to peel celtuce’s tough outer skin off in order to get to the good stuff. – Swier Family Farm. The stem should be between three to four centimeters in diameter. Finely slice the peeled onion quarter and add both to the bowl with the celtuce. The chef April Bloomfield says it's "the most underrated vegetable." Celtuce lettuce is the ideal lettuce to grow for Asian / Chinese recipes, as well as stewed and creamed dishes. Here's how to cook it. To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories. JAVASCRIPT IS DISABLED. I am currently developing my own range of products. Needed some mushies for a film project with a new, Simple is how I’ve been using the butternuts. Preparation of ingredients: lettuce, scallion 2 tablespoons, salt and sugar2. It’s taste is crisp, moist, and mildly flavored, and typically prepared by slicing and then stir frying with more strongly flavored ingredient while the young leaves are used as lettuce for salads and stir-fry. (In this way, the asparagus comparison is apt: celtuce is just as multipurpose.) Square off into rectangles for easy peeling. Celtuce lettuce is the ideal lettuce to grow for Asian / Chinese recipes, as well as stewed and creamed dishes. Cut the celtuce into manageable lengths, then sqaure them off, and use a vegetable peeler to make paper-thin ribbons. It's crisp, mild, and a little nutty, making it great for things like stir-fries and pickles. It’s taste is crisp, moist, and mildly flavored, and typically prepared by slicing and then stir frying with more strongly flavored ingredient while the young leaves are used as lettuce for salads and stir-fry. In the mean time I am also an Amazon Associate which means that some of the links on this site are affiliate links. Wash, top and tail the celery stick and slice to a thickness of around a quarter inch. Read More. Required fields are marked *. On, Butternuts. Although the entire vegetable is edible, celtuce is primarily grown for its stem. lettuce with a planer shaved (to white part of the stem shaved clean, affecting the taste)3. It's pronounced like the thing Girl Scouts do with cookies ("sell"), and the second syllable rhymes with "bus.". You can start the celtuce indoors 6 weeks before the last frost and transplant out as long as you’re careful not to damage the roots. Nothing to do with butternut squash, t, Chillin Dunlop likes them fresh or lightly sauteed in salads, or stir-fried or added to "slow-simmered stews.". Peel the celtuce stem and finely slice. The best time for harvesting celtuce is when the stem has grown to a height of 15 to 25 centimeters. You haven't mentioned if it will spiralize, though. Into the bowl that is holding the celtuce leaves, add the celtuce stems, roughly torn celery leaves and stone fruit. Celtuce is common at Chinese markets—check there—but less available elsewhere, despite the fact that its seeds have been for sale in the U.S. for almost 80 years (see below). Both were rapacious seed collectors. Crawl on your hands and k, Our snow just melted in WI, which means there’s, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plantforagers, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mushroomtalk, How to Prepare Celtuce - Gardening Jones' Recipe Box, TIP OF THE DAY: Celtuce, Stem Lettuce | THE NIBBLE Blog - Adventures In The World Of Fine Food, celtuce: the stems, the leaves, the low-down (learning together!) They will be marked as ‘Available from Amazon’, which will direct you to the Amazon site. Which is why I started the Chef's Gardener website. Once you get it home, you'll want to peel the tough skin off of the stem. Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework, « Hot Beef Commercial, With Dried Bolete Mushrooms. Celtuce will indeed spiralize. HTML tags allowed in your comment:
, Hi, I'm Minze and I love growing fruit & veg as well as cooking. ), Nope—"celtuce" is a portmanteau of "celery" and "lettuce." But really you don't even need a spiralizer for this one: a vegetable peeler is enough for you to produce long, flat, beautiful celtuce noodles. Lettuce is a cool weather crop with spring and autumn sowing recommended for best results. (His pickle recipe is here. Treat like lettuce and sow in the spring, harvesting leaves as soon as big enough. The inner stem is crunchy, juicy, and flavorful. Lettuce lettuce is rich in nutrients, especially in leaves. Ruth Reichl's a big fan. Once the celtuce germinates and is big enough, thin out to 12 inches apart. Wash the leaves and also finely slice before adding both to a mixing bowl. pickled look (pickled time not too short, let the water of the lettuce are marinated out the taste was crisp, if not pickled, the back of the mix or after the water will affect the taste)5. marinated a good lettuce dried up (squeezed the taste to do)6. add onion oil, half teaspoon of salt and sugar can mix well (no scallion with sesame oil or olive oil can), This is the only lettuce type I would grow. And here's a recipe for a simple Sichuan celtuce stir-fry from the blog China Sichuan Food, where you'll also find recipes for wood-ear stir-fry with celtuce and yam and celtuce salad with spring onion, which is garnished with bright-red chile pepper.