Salad mix (Mesclun)
Lactuca sativa
Similar veggies:
Rucola, Lamb’s lettuce, Winter purslane, Lettuce heads
A quick introduction
When we feel like spoiling our CSA members, we roam the fields to assemble a tasty and diverse salad mix. We like to add lettuce leaves from come-and-cut-again types of lettuce, but also try to make the mix more interesting by adding surprisingly-flavoured leaves, such as purple and golden frills, mizuna, rucola, red baby chard, sorrel, wood sorrel, pea shoots and sometimes even flowers or microgreens. Our salad mix needs little more than a sprinkling of good olive oil, a nice vinegar and a pinch of salt.
Storage
As with all leafy greens we recommend washing the salad mix in cold water (we do pre-wash it at the farm), then spin-dry it and store in a closed container in the fridge. This way it will keep for almost a week.
Season
Late spring to fall
Suggestions for preparation
Here are Stadsgroenteboer Andres' basic guidelines to make a filling salad.
Make sure you have at least a few of the ingredient types below:
-Crunchy & juicy elements like kohlrabi, carrots, turnips.
-Spicy elements such as mustard greens, rucola or radishes.
-Green elements like carrot greens, lettuce and radish tops (if very tender).
-Spring onions, chives or young garlic.
-Filling elements like roasted sunflower seeds, walnuts, hazelnuts, sprouts, tofu or mushrooms
-Some delicious edible flowers such as nasturtiums, borage or rucola flowers.
-A vinaigrette with good olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and whatever else you like.
And voilá, there you have your salad!