If you’re interested you can Google® Via Carota. You’ll learn the restaurant in New York City’s West Village prides itself in offering simple Italian fare. But don’t mistake the word ‘simple.’ It really isn’t.
One of the establishment’s signature dishes is Insalata Verde. It’s a combination of lettuces and a special dressing. There are no onions, no tomatoes, no cukes, no other ingredient in this salad. But it does use five kinds of lettuce. Arugula and field greens, my least favorite, are not among them.
The process is far more complicated than that of Chef Briwa (See yesterday’s blog.) It isn’t something I’d do every evening. But it IS interesting.
The salad calls for five kinds of lettuce: Boston or bib, romaine, Belgian endive, watercress, and frisee. (For two people this amount of lettuce is overwhelming; obviously in a restaurant environment, it isn’t.) Then there’s the three-water bath with no ice cubes involved.
You wash the greens and fill a container with tepid water. Depending on the lettuce you do certain trimming before dropping it into the water. Next you wash all the lettuces in cool water and a third time in cold water. (That’s a lot of water!) The next step is to spin the lettuce and wrap it in a clean cloth.
I made this salad and its special dressing recipe only once. There was no doubt it was delicious, but it was a lot of work. So, for every day, I’m clinging to Chef Briwa’s approach. An ice bath for the lettuce is now my go-to.
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