Every day during the summer, at 6:56 am and 8:43 am, Marion Sauveur gives you an idea of ​​a recipe to brighten up your taste buds. Today Celtuce also called lettuce-asparagus.

Marion Sauveur with you, every day, we rediscover the products of our land. And today, it's a bit of a particular lettuce.

Yes, the celtuce which is also called lettuce-asparagus. It is a lettuce that does not grow like the others: it does not apple, it does not form a ball, like most salads. The leaves grow on a stalk that rises to 30 centimeters. And that stem looks like a little more bloated, light green asparagus with long, narrow foliage.

The Celtuce is believed to be native to the Mediterranean, although it arrived in Asia several centuries ago and is particularly popular with the Chinese. They cook only the stem, but the leaves are also eaten. The stem tastes like asparagus with vegetal and very fresh notes. You have to peel it over the entire length before you can taste its tender flesh once cooked. The leaves are more bitter. It is better to cook them to remove some of this bitterness.

How do you cook it?

Like an asparagus: 

Ingredients

- Celtuce

- Hazelnut

- wine vinegar

- mustard

- hazelnut oil

We start by cutting off the head before peeling the stem.

We immerse the heads in boiling salted water for 30 seconds to remove this bitterness.

We let them cool and then it's the turn of the stems to take a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

During this time, we brown the hazelnuts in a pan and crush them.

We switch to the vinaigrette sauce: which we prepare with hazelnut oil.

It is placed on the stems of celtuce with the leaves.

We sprinkle small pieces of hazelnuts.

For gluttony, a few strips of Parmesan. And we go to the table.

What if we want to taste this asparagus lettuce but just put our feet under the table?

If you are in Brittany, I advise you to go to Ar Duen in the forest area of ​​La Hardouinais, in Saint-Launeux, it is in the Côte d'Armor.

Chef Sébastien Colleux offers a starter from the vegetable garden. It is worked like an asparagus, cut into sections, with its leaves just blanched and served with a hollandaise sauce, slightly lemony which reduces the bitterness of the leaves. Simply. It's light.

Chef's recipe: Celtuce lettuce with a hollandaise made with marigold flower petals from the kitchen garden

Ingredients:

1 asparagus lettuce
3 egg yolks
250 g butter
marigold flowers
lemon juice

Production :

I start by cutting off the head of the lettuce. I blanch it in salted water for 30 seconds. I keep the stem in the cold, peel it like an asparagus and cook it in the same salted water for 10 minutes.

Once cooked, I cut the stem into 1 cm rounds and stand on a plate with the heart of lettuce next to it.

Then I make a hollandaise with 3 egg yolks and 250 g of butter and I add some marigold flower petals from the vegetable garden.