Tea Bushes in Japan

Remember saying you wouldn’t trade something for all the tea in China? Well as it turns out, there is quite a lot of tea in China—more than a million metric tons in 2006, as a matter of fact. As impressive as that is, China now jockeys for first place with India, which sometimes pulls into the lead, but even when behind, is close to the same quantity of tea. So with the world consumption of tea just a little over 3 million metric tons per year, these two countries are clearly the biggest players—though they are by no means the only players. However, of all the countries producing tea today, China has the longest history.

Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as tea, actually originated in China. Legends place its first use somewhere around 2700 B.C.—but interestingly, the legends are so mundane that scholars think it likely they relate closely to the truth. The story goes that an early Chinese emperor instituted the practice of boiling drinking water to make it safe. Wherever he traveled in his realm, his servants would boil all the water that he and his entourage would need. At one point, in some small village, leaves blew into the boiling water, et voilà, tea was born. (An alternative version of the legend has this same health-conscious emperor intentionally adding different leaves to his boiling water, to see which ones might have medicinal properties.)

At first, tea was viewed as being a medicine. The Chinese believed that it was good for headache, stomachache, and a variety of other ailments. (Actually, as caffeine is the added ingredient in many extra-strength pain relievers, it’s entirely likely that tea did help some ailments.) It appears that, by around the third century A.D., tea was being consumed daily, at least in some areas, and intentional cultivation began.

By the end of the Tang dynasty (about the ninth century), tea had gained enough importance in China to be taxed. Ritual was being developed, and tea was available in varieties, including some with added spices. It was around this time, too, that the first seeds were carried to Japan. By the 13th century, tea was well established in Japan, and the refinements of the tea ceremony were taking shape.

By the 1600s, Dutch traders were carrying tea from China to Europe. The English were soon in the game, and it was the British who carried tea culture into India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Tea consumption continued to spread, and by the early 20th century, tea growing had spread to Russian Georgia, Sumatra, and Iran in Asia, Natal, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Congo, Tanzania, and Mozambique in Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru in South America, and Queensland in Australia.

Americans are beginning to appreciate tea more, but we are still minor leaguers in this game. Tea consumption remains highest in Asia, but Russia and the UK are not far behind the Asian consumers.

Tea’s heritage is reflected in its name. Pretty much all the world’s words for tea come from the beverage’s name in two Chinese dialects: t’e and ch’a. (This certainly makes it easier to get a drink when traveling, as having a limited number of possible sounds makes it easier to remember, no matter where you go. Some version of tea, té, cha, or chai will get you the local version of this beverage.)

Black tea or oolong are the dominant teas in China, but most tea in Japan is green tea. (Black, oolong, and green refer to fermentation, not variety of tea: black is fermented; oolong is partially fermented; green tea is not fermented, just dried.)

Shizuoka Prefecture, home to Mount Fuji, is Japan’s top green tea-growing region. While visiting Shizuoka last year, I visited the Tea Museum, which traces not only the history of tea in Japan, but also the use of and traditions surrounding tea from around the world. The museum is set amid miles and miles of fields of carefully trimmed tea bushes, which roll down the mountainside like green waves. The photo at the top of this page is from one of those tea fields, with Fuji rising majestically in the distance, just visible through the autumn haze. Below is a table set for tea within the museum, with cups, tea pot, and a tin of tea at the ready. (If you find yourself in Shizuoka, and hope to visit the museum, you either need to read Japanese or know someone who does. The museum is not geared for non-Japanese tourists. Fortunately, I was traveling with a friend who lived in Shizuoka.)

Ready for Afternoon Tea

Copyright ©2009 Cynthia Clampitt

The French word brûlot originally meant “fire ship.” Back in the days when all ships were made of wood, it was a reasonably common military tactic to fill an old ship with combustible materials, set it alight, and, when it was really roaring, send it out among the ships of one’s enemies, hoping that they would catch fire, which they often did. While brûlot can still refer to a fire ship, it came in time to refer to another combustible material in flames, this time brandy.

It is the flaming brandy definition of brûlot, of course, that gives us café brûlot, that sensational showstopper of New Orleans origin, where flaming brandy is the big attention-getter. There are a number of tales regarding the invention of this theatrical beverage, including one story that involves the pirate Jean Lafitte. However, somewhat more reasonably perhaps, the venerable restaurant Antoine’s, founded in 1840 and the oldest restaurant in New Orleans, lays claim to the invention. Whichever tale is true, the drink was being served at Antoine’s by the 1890s.

Many of the oldest restaurants in New Orleans came to serve café brûlot, largely because it is such a crowd pleaser. It involves a few pieces of traditional equipment and a flare for drama. A large silver bowl is the centerpiece. Orange peel (taken off all in one, long spiral), lemon peel (in strips), sugar, and whole spices are soaked in a generous amount of brandy. In supporting roles, one needs a silver ladle fitted with a grill, to strain out spices and peel, and a silver coffee pot filled with hot, strong coffee. The brandy is warmed and then set alight. The server brings out the silver bowl, using the silver ladle to pour streams of flaming brandy through the air, as well as on the tray, the table, and anywhere else it will amuse and astonish onlookers. After a couple of minutes of pyrotechnics, the hot coffee is poured into the flaming brandy, which douses the fire. (You don’t want to burn off all the alcohol, after all.) The fragrant coffee is ladled into cups, the little grill on the ladle holding back the spices and peels.

I first enjoyed café brûlot at Galatoire’s, which, at just over a century old, is not as ancient as Antoine’s, but is still one of the grandes dames of New Orleans dining. I loved the experience, but I immediately recognized a couple of limitations for making this at home, especially during the holidays. First, not everyone has a silver punch bowl, ladle, and coffee pot. Second, carrying around a large bowl of flaming brandy presents some definite risks. No one wants to end the evening having to break out the fire extinguisher. The recipe that follows avoids these problems, which means it would be possible to serve it at the end of a nice meal at home, even if you have flammable decorations up everywhere. Enjoy.

Café Brûlot—sort of
8 cups strong coffee
4 cinnamon sticks
peel of 1 lemon
peel of 1 orange
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 cup brandy

Add cinnamon sticks and peels to coffee and simmer 10 minutes. Dissolve sugar in brandy and pour into hot coffee immediately before serving.

Note: Some versions add whole cloves; some skip the orange peel. Vary to suit your taste.

Copyright ©2009 Cynthia Clampitt

Coffee Plant

Coffee beans may not offer the fairytale magic of producing giant beanstalks, but they do produce the very real and often necessary magic of waking us up, getting us going, clarifying our thoughts, helping us work, talk, cope, and get things done.

The coffee plant is a member of the madder family of plants. Rubiaceae in Latin, the madder family includes among its more than 6,500 species of tropical herbs, shrubs, and trees such fragrant delights as the gardenia and such medical wonders as quinine. But the member of the family nearest to many of our hearts is the one that produces those magic “beans.” The coffee shrub is an evergreen. In the wild, it grows to heights of 26 to 33 feet. It produces bunches of white flowers that smell much like jasmine, and each flower in time produces a fruit. The fruit, when ripe, is called a cherry, and its fleshy pulp contains two seeds. These seeds are what we know as coffee beans.

The word coffee may have evolved from the Arabic qahwah, by way of the Turkish kahveh, but some etymologists link it with the Kaffa province in southwest Ethiopia, reputed birthplace of the genus. The first domesticated species was Coffea arabica. The varieties of this species produce the finest, smoothest, most highly regarded coffees. Though they grow in the tropics, arabicas tend to like higher altitudes and cooler weather. Hence, any time you hear a coffee being described as “mountain grown,” it will be an arabica.

Coffea robusta originated (or was developed) in East Africa. C. robusta varieties (now reclassified as C. canephora) are stronger and more resistant to disease than C. arabica. They also yield more fruit and are adapted to warm, humid climates to which arabica coffee is not suited. (The photo above of the coffee plant was taken in the rainforest of the Amazon basin, in Ecuador, so it would be a robusta, as the rainforest is decidedly warm and humid.) While the robusta coffees are more neutral in taste, less aromatic, and somewhat more acidic than arabicas, they are more easily grown and harvested, don’t spoil as quickly, and are therefore less costly. They also have more caffeine—30 to 40 percent more. Of these two species, C. arabica is the more important. The only other species are minor ones that, unlike their commercially successful cousins, remain at home in West Africa, where the climate suits their needs.

There are numerous myths and fables about who, in Ethiopia, first discovered that the fruit of the coffee plant was consumable (including one tale about a goatherd who noticed that his flock was friskier than usual after nibbling the fruit), but the truth is lost in the mists of time. However, it appears that Coffea arabica had been domesticated by as early as the sixth century. The first written references are Arabic, and, as the name indicates, it is the Arabs who took the first real interest in cultivating and utilizing coffee. It appears that, at first, the berries were chewed, pulp, seeds, and all. Later, the fruit was boiled whole to create a beverage. It was not until the 13th century that the beans were separated from the pulp and roasted before infusing into what we would recognize as coffee.

Coffee became the wine of the Muslim world, because real wine is forbidden. In fact, the Arabic word for coffee, qahwah, originally meant wine. The stimulating beverage first gained popularity among the Muslim sect known as dervishes, who could whirl that much longer thanks to the caffeine. Not everyone was happy with coffee, however. The orthodox priesthood decided it was intoxicating and therefore prohibited by the Koran. But in spite of threats of severe penalties, coffee drinking continued to spread rapidly through Islamic populations. Coffee drinking reached Aden in the middle of the 15th century, then traveled to Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and on into Constantinople. The world’s first coffee house was established in Constantinople in 1554.

It was a few more decades before European travelers to the Middle East began bringing back more than just stories of the black drink that helped prevent drowsiness. There is some disagreement as to where coffee got its first test drive in Europe. It seems as though Italy, which had a long tradition of trading with Arab countries, would have had the earliest consistent exposure. France may also have shown an early interest in coffee, though it seems that it didn’t really become popular until a Turkish ambassador stationed in Paris in 1688-89 served it at his lavish parties. When coffee first arrived in England, it was sold more as a medicine than as a refreshment, with claims that it prevented everything from eye-sores to gout, scurvy, and consumption. But it was not until a Jewish merchant from Turkey opened a coffee house in Oxford in 1650 that coffee culture really began to take hold. Two years later, a coffee shop opened in London. Soon, the coffeehouses of London were the center of intellectual and political life. France was next to adopt café culture (and you can still stop in at Le Procope, opened in Paris’s Latin Quarter in 1686 and said to be the oldest café still in operation), followed by Vienna. Before long, coffee and cafés were all over Europe.

The people of the Middle East long maintained control over the coffee trade. Yemen was long the only source of coffee, and for fifty years, English and Dutch buyers had to go to Mocha to trade for the beans. The Dutch were the biggest players in the import trade, and they eventually managed to smuggle out some seedlings. By 1720, the Dutch had succeeded in growing coffee in their territories on Java in the East Indies. (So now you know where coffee got two of its more common sobriquets: mocha and java.)

Coffee plants reached the New World during the early 1700s. By the mid-1700s, coffee growing had pretty much spread to tropical areas around the world.

At first, coffee drinking was not as popular among the American colonies as it had been in Europe. The rum trade was booming, and colonists did not consider coffee a viable substitute for alcohol. However, during the Revolutionary War, the demand for coffee increased as tea became increasingly scarce, the British not wanting to share it with those revolting colonials. Americans’ taste for coffee grew following the War of 1812, which again limited access to tea imports. Then in 1832, President Andrew Jackson decided that American servicemen should get coffee instead of rum as part of their daily rations, and the image of a soldier with a cup of coffee became almost iconic. The demand for coffee continued to grow, though in the United States, it became the drink of life, not the special beverage of the urban intellectual, as it was in Europe.

By the 20th century, the Western Hemisphere was the powerhouse of coffee growing, particularly South America. Newly developed technologies made coffee even more readily available. Decaffeination methods for green coffee beans were developed and, after 1950, instant coffee was perfected. The popularity of instant coffee led to an increased demand for the C. robusta beans from Africa. It wasn’t until the later half of the 1900s that the desire for great flavor rather than mere convenience again turned the market toward C. arabica.

Today, we still pour down an awful lot of coffee that is simply intended to jumpstart our hearts and brains. However, we also pursue exquisite and sometimes costly coffees from exotic locales—Kona from Hawaii, Blue Mountain from Jamaica, Peaberry from Tanzania. But few are the coffee drinkers who pursue the rarest and costliest coffee of all: Kopi Luwak. At $75 per quarter pound, it’s the most you can pay for coffee.

Why the high price? Well, it’s how the coffee is produced that makes it both rare and special. Kopi Luwak comes from the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi. (In fact, the word “kopi” is simply Indonesian for “coffee.”) A small marsupial, the common palm civet, known locally as the luwak, lives on these islands, and it is a connoisseur of coffee. These marsupials climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries. Most of the flesh of the coffee cherries is digested, but the beans emerge from the digestive process nearly intact, though enhanced by the enzymes in the animals’ stomachs. The expelled beans are collected, cleaned, and processed for market. Don’t look for it at your corner café, but you can find it on the Internet, along with the cute critter who “processes” the beans for you.

Today, coffee is described using nomenclature as complex as that of wine. Estates on several continents and numerous islands produce coffee beans with distinct flavors, acidity, body, and balance. People are becoming more selective and more knowledgeable. At the same time, coffee remains the fuel that keeps much of the Western world moving, a beverage as comfortable around the campfire as it is in an espresso bar.

© 2009 Cynthia Clampitt
Originally appeared in a slightly different form in Hungry Magazine

Today, people call just about any piece of chocolate with a ganache filling “truffle.” It has gotten to the point where the term is so common in this context, some people are surprised to learn that the word “truffle” actually originally applied to something other than chocolate.

Truffles—real truffles—are wonderful fungi that grow on tree roots. They are a bit lumpy, looking rather like something that was intended to be spherical but got slightly battered. However, they are beautiful to those who fancy them. I adore the earthy flavor and fragrance of truffles.

Chocolate truffles began to become popular in the early 1900s. They were called “chocolate truffles” because they looked like real truffles (black truffles, that is; there are also white truffles, but that’s not what these imitate). The original chocolate truffles (which are still commonly made in Europe) did not have a chocolate coating, and they were not perfectly round. They were, like real truffles, a bit lumpy, and they were dusted with cocoa powder, to keep them from sticking together, as well as to suggest the dry dirt that might cling to a real truffle. They were meant to amuse the eye, as well as the palate. Because they are not coated, they are quite delicate—which is probably why folks started coating them. They’re easier to package and ship. But that doesn’t mean they’re better.

The recipe that follows is for the original chocolate truffles—the kind that look like the famous fungus. When you roll them into balls, you don’t have to worry about making them perfectly round, because they’re supposed to look like truffles (or truffes, which is French for truffle; this was originally a French recipe). The recipe below is for classic chocolate truffles. They are unbelievably good.

Truffes au chocolat
(Chocolate truffles)

1/4 pound bittersweet chocolate
3 Tbs. milk
4 Tbs. butter
Yolk of one egg
Unsweetened cocoa powder and granulated sugar

Melt chocolate in milk in top section of a double boiler, stirring frequently. Stir in butter. When butter is melted and incorporated into the chocolate, chill the mixture slightly. Add the egg yolk, stirring until it is completely incorporated. Chill until firm.

Use a spoon to scoop out portions of the chilled chocolate and roll it into small balls (about 3/4 inch in diamter; 1 inch diameter maximum). Roll the balls in a mixture of equal parts of cocoa powder and sugar. Keep refrigerated. The number of truffles will depend on the size.

Notes: Be careful not to burn the chocolate when melting it. Make sure the chocolate is sufficiently cool before adding the egg yolk, so that it doesn’t cook the egg. Work quickly when making the balls, so the chocolate doesn’t get too soft. Feel free to return the mixture to the refrigerator if it starts to get unmanageable. Enjoy.

© 2009 Cynthia Clampitt

Chocolate Grinders, Oaxaca, Mexico

There really is no good substitute for chocolate—but you couldn’t tell that to the creative Aztec forgers who found a way to create a cacao alternative at a time when the beans were a form of money. Fake cacao beans might have been harder to keep in circulation than forged paper money, however.

Theobroma cacao (and who would disagree with the name—Theobroma means “drink of the gods”) was used by Aztecs in ways that would not seem familiar or even appealing to most of us today. While the pre-Columbian practice of grinding chocolate and chilies together is still reflected in Mexico’s mole sauce, and has re-emerged in a few daring, high-end confections, the chocolate preparations of the Aztecs were generally designed for impact rather than taste. The two forms for consumption were pastes and drinks. Cocoa pastes might include (in addition to chilies) corn, fruit, or hallucinogenic mushrooms. Beverages, which also incorporated hot chilies, were unsweetened and beaten until frothy. Only the ruling class could afford (or were permitted) chocolate, but they consumed it in large amounts. The emperor Moctezuma in particular was a fan. He drank his chocolate from golden goblets—some say as many as 40 servings a day—because it was reputed to be an aphrodisiac.

The seeds (for they are in fact seeds, not beans—though no one calls them cacao seeds) are so bitter that even in some South American cultures, people just ate the white flesh between the beans, and left the beans. It took that kind of obsession with magic and medicine possessed by the Aztecs to make them popular even on their home turf.

The Spanish, who were the first Europeans to encounter cacao, initially thought that the best thing to do was throw it out. But as weird as the bitter, fiery drink seemed, the claim that it was an aphrodisiac was appealing. Then there was the attraction of anything that was used as money and reserved for royalty. It must have some value! So in 1519 Hernando Cortez gathered up cacao beans, along with Aztec ideas of preparing them, and off to Europe they were sent—and for close to 100 years, the Spanish, and to a lesser degree the Portuguese, held on to the secret of this strange discovery from the New World.

The spread of chocolate was fairly slow, but increased as improvements (such as the addition of sugar) were made. By 1615, it was appearing in France, still in the form of a drink. In 1657, a Frenchman opened a coffee shop in London that also offered chocolate. By this time, chocolate was being sold in bars, which could be melted to make a drink or used in cooking. While it was not reserved for royalty, it was hardly affordable—not quite worth its weight in gold, but close. (Part of the excessive cost was due to duties, and English and Dutch smugglers were soon turning a tidy profit conveying illegal chocolate to private clubs in England and Holland.) It was in England in 1700 that milk was first added to chocolate.

The first chocolate factory in North America was opened in 1765 in Dorchester, Massachusetts. It was financed by James Baker, and Baker’s chocolate can still be seen in the baking goods section of most grocery stores. Surprisingly, the Swiss were among the last to get on board with chocolate making, not really getting started until the mid-1800s. But when they got involved, they did so whole-heartedly, and in 1876, M. D. Peter sprang milk chocolate bars on a soon to be grateful world.

Our word for chocolate comes, through Spanish, from the Nahuatl word xocoatl, which may have meant “bitter drink” or possibly “foamy drink.” The Nahuatl word for the cacao tree was cuauhcacahuatl, so I’m glad they went with the shorter word. One of the commonest additions to chocolate is also owed to the tropical Americas: vanilla. It was the one Aztec addition to cacao that worked for Europeans.

There is a darker side to the rise of chocolate, though tea and coffee share this history. It was the rise in the consumption of this mighty trio of beverages that led to the demand in Europe for more and more sugar—a demand that eventually led to the extensive plantation system and its attendant slavery in the West Indies.

Today, we can enjoy chocolate that is grown by free people and priced well within the budget of almost everyone. And now there’s this bonus: recent research has shown that dark chocolate is incredibly high in antioxidants and is as good for you as green tea—and possibly better. (Further proof that God loves us, as far as I’m concerned.)

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in Hungry Magazine.
© 2009 Cynthia Clampitt

The recipe below is for a Thai dish called larb nua. This is the first Thai dish I ever had, though it has now been a couple of decades since my brother first took me to the Thai Room on Western for my birthday—back when there were only a few Thai restaurants in Chicago. He ordered, as he was already familiar with the cuisine, and larb was our starter. I loved it, and still do. I have, since then, enjoyed it often, both at the growing number of Thai restaurants over here and during two trips to Thailand.

As is common in Asia, though this is called a salad, lettuce plays only a supporting role. This dish can also be made with ground chicken, in which case it is larb kai. Enjoy.

Larb Nua
(Spicy Thai Beef Salad/Appetizer)

1/4 cup uncooked white rice
1 lb. ground beef
1/4 cup lime juice*
2 Tbs. Thai fish sauce
1/2 tsp. galangal powder
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
6–8 scallions, thinly sliced
2 Tbs. chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tbs. chopped fresh mint leaves
1 tsp. crushed red pepper*
Lettuce (about 1 head iceberg or 3 heads butter lettuce)
Mint sprigs for garnish, if desired

In a small pan, cook the rice over medium heat, shaking the pan frequently, until the rice is a nice golden brown, about 4 to 8 minutes. Grind the rice fine in a blender or coffee grinder, and set aside. (Alternatively, if you have a good Asian grocery store, you can just buy toasted ground rice. But this is so easy to make, I don’t bother, since I need so little for this recipe.)

Put the ground beef, lime juice, fish sauce, galangal powder, and onions into a skillet and stir to combine, breaking apart the beef. Still stirring occasionally, to keep beef broken apart, cook this combination over medium-high heat for about 5-7 minutes, or until the beef is cooked.

Remove the skillet from the heat. Add the scallions, cilantro, mint, crushed red pepper, and ground rice. Mix thoroughly so that all the ingredients are well combined.

There are two primary ways for serving this dish. One way is to put down a bed of lettuce leaves and pile the larb on top. The other way is to have the lettuce and larb separate, and spoon larb into individual lettuce leaves and eat them as wraps. The first way is tidier, the second way is more fun. Serves 6–7 as a first course, 3–4 as a meal.

*Notes: Key lime juice is your best choice, as key limes are the same basic lime variety as Southeast Asian limes.

A full tsp. of crushed red pepper makes this pretty fiery—which is authentic, but perhaps not to your taste. If you are unaccustomed to spicy food, you might want to start with 1/2 tsp, or even 1/3 tsp. of the red pepper. You could even leave it out. It will still be delicious.

©2009 Cynthia Clampitt

Ancient Greeks and Romans were the people most responsible for what we in the West view as “what’s for dinner.” They were the ones who added lettuce-based salads and desserts to a menu that had previously focused on just getting enough calories to survive. I’ve actually noticed in my travels that, in areas outside the cultural influence of Greece and Rome, these things—lettuce salads and dessert—don’t really exist. In Asia, servers will put out a sliced orange at the end of a meal, because they’ve learned that American and European tourists expect something sweet, but it’s not part of the culture, and a nice tossed green salad is just not something you’re going to find on a traditional Oriental menu. (This is not to say they don’t have sweets; they just don’t have dessert. Sweets are snacks.)

Evidence from Egyptian tomb paintings indicates that lettuce was being cultivated in Egypt before 4500 BC, though the first writings were Assyrian documents from around 800 BC, when lettuce was identified as being among the 250 plants growing in the gardens of King Merodach-Baladan in Babylon. The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that lettuce appeared on royal tables in Persia by about 550 BC, but it was a delicacy reserved for kings. These civilizations all bordered on the likely point of origin of lettuce: inner Asia Minor, trans-Caucasus, Iran, and Turkistan.

Rome loved lettuce as soon as it arrived, which was before 500 BC, because by 500 BC, lettuce was listed along with cabbage and artichokes as the three most popular vegetables in the empire. It was the Romans who decided that leaf lettuce would be nicer if there were more leaves and they were closer together, so they bred the first head lettuce. The Romans preferred the Cos lettuces, what we more commonly call Romaine (actually, that’s why we call it Romaine—it was Rome’s lettuce, though by the time the lettuce was being called Romaine, Rome was the home of popes, not emperors). But the alternate name of Cos tells us where the lettuce came from before it reached Rome: the Greek island of Cos.

Lettuce spread northward from the Mediterranean, both in wild and cultivated forms. Actually, cultivated lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is closely related to the wild lettuce (Lactuca scariola), from which it seems likely (though not definite) that the domestic varieties were developed. By 600 AD, lettuce was also being grown in China, from whence it spread throughout Asia.

Lettuce continued to gain popularity through the Middle Ages, so it was natural that it be among the plants brought to the New World once the Atlantic had been crossed. And they brought it early. Columbus must have taken seeds with him, as lettuce was growing on Isabela Island in the Bahamas by 1494. Successive landfalls were made as new places were explored and settled, and lettuce spread through North and South America, both in wild and domestic forms.

Lettuce continued to be immensely popular. Thomas Jefferson grew 19 varieties of lettuce at Monticello. Three types of lettuce seed arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788, and it quickly spread there, as well.

Today, lettuce continues to be immensely important. In the United States, it is second only to potatoes as most popular fresh vegetable. The average American consumes around 30 pounds of lettuce each year. But lettuce is important worldwide, including in those countries where a tossed green salad is almost unknown (such as Asia, where it can be anything from a hot vegetable to a wrap for savory fillings). It is the world’s most popular salad plant.

Lettuce probably gets its name from the Old French laitues (plural of laitue, the French name for lettuce). Like the plant’s Latin name, Lactuca (think lactose), the French name laitue also means “milky” (milk is lait in French). This is because lettuce has a milky juice running in its veins—a juice which, like milk, is mildly sedative.

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in Hungry Magazine.
© 2009 Cynthia Clampitt

In Mexico’s Yucatan, pickled red onions—cebollas encuridas— are served at almost every meal, appearing as soon as you sit down, along with the salsa. They are a delightful and delicious way to enhance foods, from simply piling them on tortilla chips to using them to enhance a dish. I came to be fairly addicted to them when I toured the Yucatan a few years ago, and I now make them regularly.

You must use sour orange juice. It’s completely different from sweet orange juice—more like lime juice. Straight vinegar would be better than using sweet orange juice, but look for sour orange in the Hispanic- or Mexican-foods aisle of your grocery store, or check at a Hispanic grocery store. It’s worth the effort, because the flavor really is different if you try substitutes for the sour orange.

And just so you know, these are good with more than just Mexican food. Almost anywhere you’d use pickles, relish, or onions can be enhanced with this flavorful condiment. Enjoy.

Cebollas Encuridas
Yucatecan Pickled Onions

1 large red onion, thinly sliced
boiling water, to cover
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup sour orange juice, or to cover
1/2 tsp dried oregano, preferably Mexican oregano

Pour boiling water over the sliced onions. Let sit for 1 minute. Drain, discarding the water. Put the onion in a non-reactive container (glass, porcelain, etc.) and add the rest of the ingredients. Let sit for at least one hour, but preferably overnight. Depending on the size of the onion, makes 1 to 1-1/2 cups of pickled onion.

Note: If I’m pressed for time, which is almost always, I’ll just grab the bottle of Mojo Criollo that I almost always have on hand, and use that in place of everything except the onion. This great marinade can be found in just about any Hispanic grocery store, and it contains most of the ingredients listed above: sour orange, garlic, salt, pepper, and “herbs.” The difference in the result is close to unnoticeable—so feel free to take the easy way out.

©2009 Cynthia Clampitt