If I had to make a bed from one vegetable, it would be butterhead lettuce. Its soft, velvety leaves and bouncy heart would make a good mattress, I think. And, if I had enough and they’d never seen a fridge, the largest leaves could provide a floppy cover. My green bed would not only be comfortable; it would also be useful: despite modern conclusions that the milky lactucarium that seeps from lettuce stems is not a sedative, I’m with ancient doctors and hopeful that eating my cover would send me to sleep.
The ancient Egyptians – great cultivators of lettuce – saw it as sacred, though for different reasons. In Egyptian mythology, Min, one of the earliest known Egyptian deities of rain, fertility, crops and male potency, and often represented by an ithyphallic figure, was often associated with lettuce. But it was not the butterhead from which I am going to make my bed, but rather a tall variety with a “straight vertical surge of growth and milky juice”, as Jane Grigson describes it. Yet research in 2015, by Pauline Norris at the University of Manchester about the association of Min with the lettuce plant, concludes that lettuce was offered to Min simply to ensure the fertility and regeneration of agriculture, rather than as an aphrodisiac to increase sexual desire. Even so, buying a cos at the corner shop is now forever changed.
You don’t want a cos for today’s dish, though: instead, you need two soft butterheads. It is the most beautiful, layered lettuce, which, despite claims by pretty, flecked radicchio, is the vegetable most like a rose. Butterhead is also, I think, the best lettuce for a salad: the crisper, paler heart provides substance and body (with the addition of herbs, maybe, and red leaves, too), while the softer, velvet leaves both catch and mop up the dressing like floor cloths. Known as lattuga cappuccina or a cappuccio in Italy, butterheads are also wonderful cooked, be that on a grill, braised or, as I found over a week spent in Liguria, as a wrapping that’s every bit as good as cabbage.
I was doubtful when I first saw stuffed lettuce in broth in a Ligurian cookbook, and later on a menu. But then I remembered my doubts about braised lettuce, until I tried a Simon Hopkinson recipe for little gems. I also recalled my doubts about frying them, until I made escarole in olive oil with garlic and chilli. The tenderness of butterhead does mean it seems even more tender when wilted, but there is strength in wilting, plus it wraps tightly around a filling of breadcrumbs, cheese, herbs and nuts. The cocktail sausage-sized parcels are then poached in broth.
The excess uncooked lettuce can, of course, be used for salad, mixed with other leaves and herbs and dressed how you like (I go for six tablespoons of olive oil, and a tablespoon each of red-wine vinegar and dijon mustard, all shaken together in an old jam jar). Alternatively, leftover leaves, while not a bed, might make a pillow.
Stuffed lettuce in brodo
Serves 4
2 heads soft-leaved butterhead lettuce
1½ litres good vegetable broth
2 eggs
100g soft white breadcrumbs
150g parmesan, grated, plus extra to serve
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely minced
50g pine nuts or almonds, finely chopped or pounded
2 heaped tbsp minced parsley
1 tsp minced marjoram
Salt and black pepper
Separate the leaves from the lettuces, select the 24 nicest and best-looking ones, then wash (save the rest for another use). Bring the broth to a boil, then blanch the leaves for 30 seconds, scoop out and blot dry: they should be soft and floppy, so cut away any hard central ribs.
Lightly beat the eggs, mix with the breadcrumbs and leave to sit for 10 minutes. Add the cheese, garlic, nuts, herbs, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, and mix well to combine.
Lay out the leaves flat on a work surface, put a teaspoonful of the filling in the middle of each, then swaddle it like a baby: lift up the bottom half of each leaf, bring it in at the sides, roll up into a neat and very tight little parcel. Seal with toothpicks.
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer, lower in the lettuce parcels and poach for 10 minutes.
Serve in shallow bowls, giving everyone six parcels and some broth, and pass round more cheese for those who want it.
