Kitchen Garden Journal

What better way to use that last primo tomato of the season than on a final summertime B.L.T.? All B.L.T.’s are not created equal, and this one had to be perfect. 

Care must be taken to select the best bacon, the proper bread, and the right condiments.

Tomato: Kitchen Garden Cuostralee (heavy red late season heirloom) 

Lettuce: Kitchen Garden green butterhead

Bacon: Niman Ranch Maple Smoked

Bread: Whole Foods baguette rolls, toasted whole for a warm and crusty exterior and a moist, soft interior

Mayo: Cains

Chips: Laurel Hill Sea Salt

Pickles: Clausen Kosher Dills, minis

Beverage: Coca Cola Classic, on ice, in a glass

Discuss.

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Having fresh herbs around really inspires me to cook. One recipe I always associate with the flavors of cilantro and mint are these Vietnamese Spring Rolls. This is a recipe that I have blatantly stolen from one of my favorite food blogs, Rasa Malaysia. View the original with all the gorgeous photos here. I recently made this for a crew lunch for 8 and served it do-it-yourself style (Candace took this photo), everyone soaking the rice paper and making custom fillings at the table. In addition to the pork I served fried tofu strips and blanched shrimp. It's also nice to have some nuoc cham on hand for dipping.

For the grilled pork:

1 lb pork chops, loin, butt or shoulder. Sliced thin.
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 Tbs fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1/4 cup peanut or vegetable oil

Hoisin Peanut Dipping Sauce Recipe

1 cup (8 oz) hoisin sauce (if sauce is thick, add about 1/4 cup warm water to reach desired consistency)
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1 Tbs rice vinegar
2 garlic, crushed
1 minced thai chili, or more for desired spiciness

For spring roll rice paper assembly:

About 10 rice paper wrappers
Lettuce
Cucumber, cut into long slices
Fresh herbs: mint, cilantro, basil, vietnamese coriander, balm or perilla
Bean sprouts

Method:

1. In plastic bag, combine all ingredients for the grilled pork. Let marinade for about 20 minutes. Grill both sides of pork for about 2-3 minutes, or until desired texture.
2. In blender, combine all ingredients for the hoisin peanut dipping sauce. Blend until everything combines smoothly together. If it is too thick, continue adding warm water until desired consistency.
3. In bowl of warm water, dip each rice paper wrapper for about 3-5 seconds (depending on rice paper thickness). Do not over soak your rice paper wrapper! Place on work service and allow rice paper to soak up water and become gelatinous and pliable (about 30 seconds to 1 minute, again, depending on the thickness rice paper).
4. On top 1/3 side closest to you, lay lettuce on the bottom for added strength to the wrapper. Then place meat, herbs and other vegetables. Roll up spring roll about 1/3 way through, then fold in the sides.
5. Serve with hoisin peanut dip.

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Lettuce is the invisible vegetable. It never seems to be the focus of attention. The most popular specimens have the "mildest," or most minimal flavor. There are few recipes where it features prominently. Most preparations using lettuce call for adding a dressing that is either pronouncedly sour, salty, sweet or all of the above. Why are people so intent on covering up the flavor of a vegetable that has very little flavor of its own? Could it be that maybe we are just taking the wrong approach? Misinterpreting the lowly lettuce?

(How and why a supposedly boring vegetable like lettuce is the number 1 vegetable in America and for our farm is perhaps a subject for a different post.)

Over the winter I rekindled my interest in Asian food, sparked by an escapist impulse and memories of our trip to Thailand a few winters ago (before babies), and also by the Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang, which Caroline gave me for my birthday. (I read the book back to front in one sleepless night, promptly lent it to a friend and haven't seen it since. In any case it left a lasting impression.) Cooking Asian inspired me to think about and use lettuce a little differently.

Asian food in general and southeast Asian food in particular is very intentional in the way it sets up flavor, textural, and even color contrasts, and lettuce assumes a very different role in these cuisines. In Thailand, which has an amazing tradition of hot and sour salads, called yam, the lettuce is served next to the salad, plain, undressed, as a fresh and bland counterpoint to the pungent main attraction, be it grilled steak, fresh shellfish, or any number of other things. You can wrap a small ball of rice in the lettuce and use it to sop up some of the dressing, of course.

In Korea, lettuce assumes an ice-cream-cone-like function in a class of wrapped foods called ssam. It serves as an edible vehicle (in lieu of plate) for different combinations of protein (grilled meat, shucked oysters), starch (rice), vegetables (kimchi), and pungent condiments, each diner constructing his or her own lettuce packet to their own tastes. (Read about it in Momofuku. Then just try to resist the urge to make it at home.) Get the recipe here. You can buy the book from one of our two favorite food bookshops, Kitchen Arts & Letters and Rabelais.

An identical tradition of lettuce wrapping is alive and well in Vietnamese cuisine. My FAVORITE restaurant in the valley is Bamboo House in Springfield and I seriously jones for the fried spring rolls. Not because the spring rolls are anything special per se (they are excellent), but because of that side plate they give you with lettuce, mint, and culantro. You take a lettuce leaf, add the herbs, put a piece of spring roll in there and dip it in the ubiquitous nuoc cham dipping sauce before shoving the whole package into your face. The act of constructing it adds so much to the experience of sharing the food with another person. And there's a whole world of flavor in that one bite: the crispiness of the fried wrapper, the unctuous pork-shrimp-noodle sausage within, the aromatic herbs, and the fresh, neutral lettuce leaf holding everything together for that final plunge into the chili-laced sweet and sour fish sauce.

None of it would be possible without the lettuce. So think about that the next time you mindlessly reach for that bottle of ranch.   

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