What To Do with Your Celtuce

I love that the CSA introduces me to foods that I've never heard of or tasted. At least, I love it most of the time. Other times, the unfamiliar produce rots in the back of my fridge while I curse myself for not sticking to a grocery-store run of iceberg and green beans.

This week is going to be different. This time, I'm well prepared for the wild-card ingredient. In this case, it's celtuce.

Celtuce, a varietal of lettuce, is also called “stem lettuce,” “asparagus lettuce,” “celery lettuce,” or, in Chinese, wosun.¹ One HuffPost writer describes it as "cooked leek" with "the homogeneity of a noodle and some of the crunch of shaved jicama. Its bright flavor was a little like a mix between bok choy, celery root and water chestnut, but was far milder than any of those."

Sounds tasty. But, how does one prepare it? I did some research on ways to serve your celtuce ranging from easy to adventurous. Here are 6 ways to enjoy what just might become your new favorite vegetable.

1. Chop it up and eat it

Because it's a type of lettuce and a near-anagram of lettuce, celtuce (or at least the leafy part of it) is no different from any other lettuce. To make your salad especially spiffy, try serving it with shaved nuts or with fried potato slices and pecorino, as shown above.

2. Make celtuce pancakes

Chop up your celtuce, mix it with eggs, salt, flour, and oil, fry it, and you've got celtuce latkes. 

3. Pickle it

One way to mask the flavor of celtuce is to make your celtuce taste like vinegar! On his blog, Kian Lam Kho provides a recipe for the comforting breakfasts of his childhood that featured pickled celtuce. "What makes the meal so special is the crunchy salty and sweet celtuce pickle," he writes.

4. Make a slaw

 

This looks so easy and doesn't involve any cooking. Soy Rice Fire has a recipe for solo celtuce, but I bet it'd be great with carrots, cucumber, zucchini, or cabbage mixed in, too.

5. Cook it like a noodle

Celtuce stalk has a thicker consistency, which makes it a great sub for noodles. Spice the Plate has a recipe for a ham and celtuce dish that has all the flavor of a stir fry but blanches the celtuce instead of frying it.

6. Get fancy

By and large, my searches on celtuce led to haute cuisine. Tops chefs serve it under pork fat, lamb breast, seared scallops, and Alaskan halibut a la Jordan Kahn. But my favorite, by far, is the SWEET CORN / custard, frozen uni powder, rambutan, lemongrass, chervil, young ginger, celtuce served in a fish bowl (via pocketfork, pictured above).

Go on, impress everyone you know. You've got celtuce on your side.

For more tips on cooking and eating celtuce, check out Food52.