31.7.12

LETTUCE IN BRINE - ECETES SALÁTA

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 lettuce
2 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.

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It began with posting a few recipes on line for the family. "zsuzsa is in the kitchen" has more than 1000 Hungarian and International recipes. What started out as a private project turned into a well visited blog. The number of visitors long passed the two million mark. I organized the recipes into an on-line cookbook. On top of the page click on "ZSUZSA'S COOKBOOK". From there click on any of the chapters to access the recipes. For the archive just scroll to the bottom of the page. I am not profiting from my blog, so visitors are not harassed with advertising or flashy gadgets. The recipes are not broken up with photos at every step. Where needed the photos are placed following the recipe. Feel free to cut and paste my recipes for your own use. Publication is permitted as long as it is in your own words and with your own photographs. However, I would ask you for an acknowledgement and link-back to my blog. Happy cooking!