In the spring and early summer, this is what graced our Sunday dinners and if we were lucky, we would get it during the week with paprikás krumpli or tojásos nokedli. I never saw mixed salads, until I came to Canada. We always had our lettuce this way, although I have seen plain lettuce served in a restaurant once, I remember asking my aunt, "Ez meg mi?" She said it was natúr saláta.
Go forward just a few decades and the grandchild is eating her salad the natúr way. She started eating our freshly grown lettuce when her grandfather introduced her to the rabbit way of eating it. Gosh they make a funny pair.
Always use butter lettuce, no other lettuce can give you the same wonderful flavour. Remember, brining is a minimalist treatment, other types of lettuce would be either too bland or could overpower this light sweet and sour brine. As for the brine, how sweet or sour it should be is entirely personal.
LETTUCE IN BRINE
1 round head of butter lettuce2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
sugar to taste
white vinegar to taste
• Fill a glass salad bowl half way with cold water.
• Add the salt and the sugar.
• Stir to dissolve the sugar.
• Add some white vinegar to make a pleasantly sweet and sour brine. Keep tasting it and adding more sugar or vinegar as needed. Now this is important, rinse the spoon after each tasting.
• Take off the outer leaves. Cut the yellow inner leaves into four parts.
• Wash the lettuce very well and shake off the water.
• Place in the brine and let it sit on the counter for twenty minutes.
• Serve the brined lettuce in individual bowls and top it off with some of the brine.
