The unusually warm autumn weather has allowed me to continue to eat some salads before the Canadian deep freeze sets in. We’re just beyond a week until Hallowe’en, I’m wearing short-sleeves and there are still alot of trees with greenery on them.
I often also pass through my local Asian market. I find good, inexpensive and often more exotic produce.
Recently I found some mache (lamb’s lettuce), by mistake. I thought I was buying some baby spinach but what when I went back to the market I saw what I had in fact bought and it (mache) was good.
Mache (lamb’s lettuce) is a good source of B-group vitamins and Vitamin C. It has a mild taste with a peppery finish which I like. I found this green to take well to many flavours and I treated it as if I were making a spinach salad.
Mache is even better than spinach as it has 1/3 more iron than spinach! Next time you’re out at the market, look for mache (lamb’s lettuce) and try it for your salad.
I present my Mache Greens With Feta Dressing as my entry for this week’s edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Susan from the Well Seasoned Cook.
Mache Greens With Feta Dressing
1 bag of mache (washed and dried)
4 white mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cucumber, sliced into half moons
1/3 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
4 strips of crispy bacon, chopped
1 scallion, finely chopped
4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
! Tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Feta Dressing
1/2 cup of strained Greek-style yogurt
1 clove of garlic, finely minced
2 Tbsp of mayonnaise
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup of crumbled good feta
2 Tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil
- Mix your ingredients for dressing in a bowl and reserve.
- Mix all of your salad ingredients and add salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
- Plate your salad and then spoon dollops of feta dressing on top. Garnish with Sumac.
This recipe has definitely been bookmarked. I love the texture of lambs lettuce and butter lettuce. I still haven’t found anywhere here that sells Greek yogurt. I would order some from a supplier I know but I would order so much it would never keep. I can use plain yogurt for the recipe instead until the Okanagan comes into this century.Thanks for the great recipe!!
Val, there’s nothing wrong with plain, whole milk yogurt. Just dump into a strainer with a pot underneath to catch the water and leave it the fridge overnight and voila…you have strained greek-style yogurt!
Everything about this sounds good to me. I remember seeing lambs lettuce on blogs from Italy, but now I want to look at my localvegetable market and see if I can get it here. I know our grocery stores don’t have it, but I’m guessing I can find it.
Bulletin: my mom’s co-worker found seens for Mache in the spring and she said that they grow real easy and continue to flourish all summer even after you keep on harvesting them for salads.
Sadly, the supermarket where she bought the seeds doesn’t have their seed display out. Alas, we must wait until next year to buty and plant Mache seeds.
If anyone needs some next year…let me know.
I love feta! I’m not a huge salad person, so maybe this will motivate me to eat more greens.
Peter, thank you for featuring this little-known salad green. It is so tender and mild, I’ll bet the feta really has it singing.
Thanks for the great entry for WHB!
Mm, feta and mushrooms and bacon, mmm…
Peter, this is my kind of salad – it looks divine!
I don’t think I have ever tried mache greens. The feta dressing sounds really tasty. It even has some Greek yogurt in it.